


Use your heart while it’s beating

by LilyRosePotter



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Canon, Harassment, M/M, Nongraphic discussion of sexual assault and suicide of an offscreen minor character, Personal Growth, Slow Burn, in-universe slurs and prejudice, internalized prejudice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 17:54:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20532140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyRosePotter/pseuds/LilyRosePotter
Summary: Tommy knows what alphas are like: aggressive, controlling, and not very smart. Then he meets Obama’s new comms director.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my unbelievably, super belated fic for Dan Bang 2019, as it turns out that bar prep is dramatically inconsistent with writing long!fic, or anything at all. Thank you for your patience.
> 
> A million thank yous to Sev, for everything from handling all the whining about this damn fic to literally formatting my html for me. Also, most importantly because when I said “hey let’s chat dommy abo” almost a whole year ago, Sev said “what about a world where alphas are looked down on” and without that, this whole thing wouldn’t exist. 
> 
> CHECK OUT THIS COOL ART:
> 
> Sansets made an [amazing mix](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20529083)
> 
> Maggie made a [beautiful graphic](https://threeblondeswithanxiety.tumblr.com/post/187521537845/use-your-heart-while-its-beating-by)

_Chicago, 2008_

Tommy glares as his new computer boots up for the third time. They have more money in the campaign fund now, you’d think they could get decent computers for _rapid response_. His Blackberry in Iowa was faster. 

“Enjoying your new digs?” Jon leans in the doorway of the bullpen with a smile that’s too wide for how little sleep Tommy knows he’s been getting. Fucking golden boy.

“They’re kinda shit,” Tommy laughs, clearing a section of his desk as Jon comes to perch on it. “Kinda like my living accomodations.” 

“Fuck off,” Jon shoves his shoulder. “I kept that shitty mattress reserved for you for a year and I’ve come to take you to lunch; show some fucking gratitude.” 

Maybe Tommy did miss him after all. 

“Anything but pizza,” Tommy grins, pushing up from his chair and grabbing for his wallet. “Katie’s coming to visit this weekend and she’s got it in her head that we have to go to some famous deep dish place. You know how they are.”

“I don’t, actually,” Jon raises his eyebrows a little. “But there’s a really good deli around the corner, come on.”

Tommy grins and follows him down the hall. 

Jon knows fucking everyone, of course. It’s kinda wild to see the personableness Tommy had watched him cultivate as a green speechwriter for a junior senator blossom into full bloom in the campaign headquarters of a major presidential candidate. 

They have to stop at least four times before they even hit the lobby, where Tommy’s new boss is talking to his deputy. 

“And my whole calendar and address book is in my desk drawer and-” 

“Dan,” Josh says patiently. “I’ve got it, you’re only gone for three days, We’ve done this before.”

Dan sighs a little and rubs his hand over his forehead, looking up and straight at Jon and Tommy. “Ah, hey guys.”

Tommy’s met Dan Pfeiffer, the campaign comms director, a bunch of times, at events and at Iowa HQ and with the Senator. He’s talked to the man maybe three times. He’s never seen him look this off-balance, slightly disheveled, sweat trailing down his forehead. 

“Hey Dan,” Jon says easily. “We’re heading out to get lunch. I’d invite you to join, but you need to be going?” 

Jon loves Dan. Even if it wasn’t evident in his tone right now, Tommy’s heard him wax poetic about Dan’s ideas in senior staff meetings countless times; seen him refer to _what Dan suggested_ at least eight times in discussions of Iowa speeches, including the fucking Jefferson-Jackson dinner; listened to Jon’s _but you’ll love working with Dan_ when Tommy let his inner apprehension about being demoted back to a rapid response drone after leading the Iowa team slip out. Tommy’s not sure he gets it. 

“Yeah I should be going,” Dan sighs “I’ve just gotta take care of a few more things at my desk. See you Friday.” 

“See you Friday!” Jon waves cheerily, heading out the front door while Tommy follows, nonplussed. 

“Dan, we’ve _got_ it-” Josh sighs as the door swings shut. 

Tommy turns to look at it and then at Jon. “The comms director’s taking three days off right when the primary is amping up?” This kind of shit, lack of dedication, is how they fucking lost New Hampshire. 

Jon looks at him, eyes gentle like Tommy’s a child. “He’s taking rut leave Tommy.” 

“The campaign communications director is a fucking _prim_?” Tommy’s eyes go wide. 

It’s fucking unheard of. It’s- Alphas aren’t supposed to be in positions of power for exactly this reason, among so many others. Ruts can’t be suppressed like heats can. One of the most important people on the campaign has to leave the office for three days so that he doesn’t hurt anyone while he’s out of control- not that he’d be any use anyway. Not that he can ever be any use anyway. 

“_Tommy_,” Jon elbows him, hard. “Don’t say that- you shouldn’t say the p word.”

“Katie says it all the time,” Tommy scoffs. “And it’s true, they’re fucking primitive. How does the Senator _trust_ him?” 

“We’re not in fucking 1950 Tommy,” Jon pushes him outside with a nervous glance behind them. “Alphas are just as capable as anyone of doing any job. You don’t think _we_ should be locked up in our parent’s houses waiting to get married, do you?” 

Tommy scoffs, “Of course not. But omegas couldn’t leave the house because of a bunch of junk science about being weak and helpless. People always knew we were smart.” 

Jon glowers at him. “You shouldn’t let anyone hear you talk like that Tommy. Senator Obama is proud of our progressive and diverse team. And,” he puffs his chest out a little. “So am I.” 

“Fine, fine,” Tommy sighs. He doesn’t want to fight with Jon. And if Obama _and_ Jon trust Dan, maybe there’s something there. Still, he’d better not let his guard down too much. “Where’s this magic deli?” 

***

“Wasn’t that delicious?” Katie grins across the table after swallowing the end of their deep dish pizza. 

Tommy pokes at the remnants of his single slice. He hates deep dish. “Fantastic. Quintessentially Chicago.” 

“We might have time for ice cream before the tour,” she winks at him. 

Tommy grins in spite of himself. “Ice cream sounds wonderful.” 

The gangsters and ghosts tour Katie booked for them… less wonderful. The fact that he’s missing karaoke night at the dive down the street from the Pad, the opposite of wonderful. But, when he’d suggested going out with the campaign staff, Katie had scoffed. 

“Quit sulking,” she frowns at him. Tommy forces a strained smile. They only have a weekend together, he should stop complaining, even if it’s mostly internally. “It’s not like you’re going to be here for long.” 

“I’ve- I think we’re gonna win,” Tommy tells her. “And I think I want to stay on when we do?” 

“Stay on...” Katie shakes her head. “We’re going to get married and you’re going to raise our children. A career in politics doesn’t jive with that.”

“For a while,” Tommy sighs. “I want to do some good in the world first.” 

Katie glares at him, eyes hard. “After you’re done with this little campaign game, we’re going to bond and then get married. We were supposed to have done it already. Our parents-” 

Tommy shrinks back in his seat under the heat of her glare and her voice. She’s right. That’s their plan - or their parents’ plan, to be more precise - ever since Tommy’s dad pulled him over to meet Katie at the Hammonds’ summer party two years ago. At the time he’d been so struck by her beauty he could almost forget she’s an alpha. His alpha. 

“And what if I get assigned to a different base?” Katie’s voice rises. “Do you expect me to keep letting you go this far away forever?”

There are a few curious looks from other diners. Tommy’s gotta defuse this now. 

“It was just a thought,” he says meekly. 

“A stupid one,” Katie snaps. “Your father won’t be happy.” 

Tommy sighs. She’s right, but he’s convinced his parents before. “Let’s not fight, Katie,” he says, placating. “We should move on from this restaurant.”

She takes a deep breath, still glaring at him a little, and checks her watch. “It is time for the gangsters,” she allows, voice still sharp and short.

“What about ice cream?” Tommy frowns. 

“Maybe after,” Katie grabs the cuff on his wrist to pull him up. “We don’t have time now.”

*** 

“Favreau, O’Neill, you take the 300 to 500 blocks,” Plouffe orders firmly. 

They’re in Pennsylvania, the state that had once seemed like the most unfathomable end for the primary, now a miserable middle of the slog. _It’s not gonna be til June and I’m gonna lose my fucking mind_,Jon keeps predicting, more and more dire as the primaries rattle on; one for him, two for her, three for him, one for her. They’re gonna win. Tommy’s still sure of it. But what the cost is gonna be, no one can say. 

The last thing he wants to be doing on a rainy afternoon in Pittsburgh is walking blocks and blocks of doors, canvassing. Plouffe’s “everyone in” strategy is great, in theory, but Tommy’s sure he could be doing more good in the field office or back at HQ. He hasn’t slept in months; he’s cancelled four phone calls with Katie in the last two weeks. He’s not sure the last time he saw a vegetable. 

“Vietor,” Plouffe’s voice pulls Tommy out of his spiral. “You and Pfeiffer are on Squirrel Hill, Wilkins to Forbes.” 

“I-” Tommy starts, eyes darting to Dan. He tries to avoid his bruque, standoffish boss. Tommy’s pretty sure they’ve never spent more than three minutes alone. Even if he could protest, Plouffe doesn’t give him time to, handing out packets and shoving them out the door. 

“Dinner after?” Jon grins and bumps Tommy’s elbow on their way out. “We can go to the Southern Tier brewery.”

“Sounds good,” Tommy manages, and then he’s alone with Dan. 

“We’ve got one of the rental cars,” Dan says gruffly, holding up a set of keys. “If we keep it moving, we’ll be done before dark.”

“Good,” Tommy murmurs. He shouldn’t be alone with Dan after dark, no matter how much everyone on the campaign trusts him, twenty-seven years of drilled in lessons about safety echoing around his head. 

_Never get in a car alone with an alpha you don’t know_, his mother warns as Dan turns the key, squinting at the GPS in silence. 

_Always make eye contact when speaking to an alpha_, the school counselor tells Tommy’s second grade class, his hand curling protectively over his swelling stomach in the last months before he’d leave the school. 

Tommy looks at Dan as Dan hands him the packet of addresses. “You want to start on the left or right side?” Dan asks, eyes flat; not cold like Tommy expects, but not warm like Katie’s when she looks at him either. 

“Flip a coin?” Tommy tries for lightness, isn’t sure he manages.

But Dan digs one out anyway, flips it with a surprisingly graceful hand. “Heads. Ah-” Dan laughs, surprisingly full. “Guess we should have set a meaning.”

“Left?” Tommy shrugs. Dan nods and pockets the coin, gesturing Tommy across the street.

_Don’t ever let an alpha get behind you again_, his father cautions thirteen year old Tommy, followed home from school by a group of raucous, pubescent alphas, hormones flaring. Tommy remembers shaking like a leaf, his father calmly telling him all the things he hadn’t accounted for. _Hide your scent, watch your surroundings, they can’t outsmart you - just be aware._

Dan lets Tommy lead all the way down the first block. The hair on the back of Tommy’s neck stands up, but he doggedly pushes on. He needs to take the lead in talking to voters anyway. 

They’ve finished half their list when they come to the house with a Confederate flag in the window. 

Tommy turns to frown at Dan. “for real?” 

Dan shrugs, “it’s on the list.”

Tommy bites his lip but walks up the drive. 

A muscled, tanned man with a full beard answers the door. Tommy’s heart rate picks up immediately, senses screaming, _alpha, danger_, except the man’s scrunched scowl isn’t directed at him. 

“Your campaign’s so down on your luck you’ve got alpha brutes out canvassing for you?” 

Tommy frowns a little, trying and failing to hold back his instinctive sniff. He’s gotten so used to the mixed pheromones at HQ, in the campaign plane, in the field offices, that he didn’t even notice, really, when they got in the car. His own suppressants mask his scent but whatever drugs Dan takes to keep his ruts to three days don’t hide his. It’s a little off, tinged with artifice, but undeniably alpha. 

“Will you be voting on the twenty-second?” Tommy pushes on with his script. 

“Not for your people,” the man sneers. “Take me off your damned list, don’t need a bunch of ferals hanging around my yard.” 

Tommy feels, rather than sees, Dan take a step back, off the porch. Tommy hadn’t realized he’d gotten that close. _Protecting_, part of his brain whispers. 

“I’ll do that sir,” Tommy says, as polite as he can manage, digging his nails into his palm. “Have a nice day.

They make it down to the sidewalk, the door slammed shut behind them, before Tommy sees Dan take a breath. 

“That guy was an asshole,” Tommy says automatically, writing _DO NOT CANVASS_ in big letters over the address.

Dan shakes his head, looking like he’s biting back his real response. Tommy clocks the restraint, tight in Dan’s muscles, and holds himself back from shivering. 

_When alphas lose it, get out of their way_, his childhood best friend warns, her arms clutched around bruises her father had left. 

Tommy bites his lip and doesn’t say anything deviating from his script for the next four blocks. 

The first door on their last assigned block is answered by a shrinking teenager. He can't be more than sixteen and he looks behind him into the house like the man from down the street is lurking. 

“Hi,” Tommy says slowly. “Is anyone home who’s a registered voter?”

The kid shakes his head, watching them carefully. “You’re in politics?” he stammers. 

Tommy bites his lip. He’s not sure what they’ve done to make this kid so scared, but he’s pretty sure they should leave.

“Yes.” Dan’s voice, pitched low and gentle, nearly makes Tommy jump in surprise. “My name is Dan, this is Tommy. We work for Senator Obama. What’s your name?”

Tommy stares, thunderstruck, as the kid carefully murmurs, “Eric. I’ve seen Senator Obama on TV. Could- Could he win?”

“We think so,” Dan laughs, inviting Eric into the joke. “That’s why we’re walking the block, trying to get people to vote for him in the primary next week.”

“I’m only seventeen,” Eric shakes his head. “But I’ll be eighteen by November.” 

“That’s great,” Dan smiles. “The general election’s even more important, no matter who wins the primary. Do you know how to register?” 

By the time they walk down to the sidewalk five minutes later, Eric has not only promised to register when he turns eighteen, he’s taken every flyer they have and given them his cell phone number to volunteer for the local field office. 

Tommy stares at Dan as they walk down the sidewalk. _There’s no alphas who are _good _with people_, his stepmother rolls her eyes when Ellen interviews an alpha rights activist on her show. 

“That was-” Tommy starts, when Dan glances over at him, assessing. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Dan’s eyes get hard. “Won’t happen again,” he mutters, pushing past Tommy to the next house. 

Tommy sighs a little. There’s the alpha he knows. Still, he wonders, as he follows Dan, maybe everyone wasn’t completely wrong to think there’s something special about Dan. 

***

Tommy pushes Jon’s door open without knocking. He’s not sure why his heart is racing; people date all the time, Jon has hooked up with a dozen people in the last few months and it’s only that few because he’s so busy. Tommy’s not a prude, mostly. Just-

Jon holds up a finger, phone held to his ear. “Yeah, I’ll have the draft to you tonight,” he drawls even as his eyes scan Tommy’s face. “Talk to you later.” 

Tommy waits until the phone clicks back into the receiver, narrowly, but it’s off, before he blurts, “are Dan and Alyssa together?” 

Jon nearly falls out of his chair laughing. 

Tommy glares at him and twists his cuff nervously. Jon keeps laughing, swiping a hand over his face. Finally he starts taking deeper breaths, looking at Tommy again. 

“I’m _serious_,” Tommy insists. 

“I know you are,” Jon laughs, shaking his head. “God, I didn’t realize how much I needed a good joke.” 

“Whatever,” Tommy sighs. He can never tell what’s going to make Jon mock him, which only makes it worse. “Forget I asked.” 

“It bothers you,” Jon frowns at him, suddenly serious. “Cause she’s a beta and he’s an alpha?” 

"It's not natural," Tommy frowns. "Alpha-beta couples can't bond and and everyone knows bonded pairs are better for the kids"

Dan isn’t exactly the kind of alpha you’d want anyway. 

“Uh huh,” Jon blinks at him. “What made you wonder, anyway?” 

Tommy blinks quickly, the scene he’d walked in on a few minutes before crystal clear. He’s noticed, the past few weeks, that Dan doesn’t seem to be as standoffish with everyone as he is with Tommy. But today… he’d gone to Alyssa’s office to bring her a press schedule from Gibbs and they were eating lunch together. Dan and Alyssa, sharing a sandwich and salad, her feet tucked under his thighs. They looked so easy and comfortable, close and, and-

“They’re very close,” Tommy tells Jon with a shrug. “People aren’t usually that close, with alphas, unless-” 

Tommy can count on one hand the amount of times he’s been touched by an alpha besides Katie. He’s certainly never been as casual as Alyssa seems to be with it. Tommy’s known Alyssa for years, he knows she’s a tactile person. But alphas don’t touch people, unless it’s to hurt them. 

“They’re friends,” Jon sighs. “Everyone on the staff is close, you know that.” 

“Sure,” Tommy nods, more to change the subject than because he believes it. “Wanna get lunch?”

***

“And here’s our gym,” the headmistress at Charlotte Prep, _the South’s pre-eminent school for well-bred alpha children_, pushes open the swinging door. Obama tries, once again, to hold it and send her through first and she, for the fifth time, refuses to budge. 

Tommy follows behind Reggie and into the towering cement-block gym. 

“Looks good for basketball,” Obama grins winningly. 

“Oh, we don’t have basketball here,” the headmistress corrects. “Our students don’t, ah, excel at team sports.” 

“What do you use the gym for then?” Obama frowns.

“Each of our students has a physical fitness schedule tailored to their age and hormone levels,” the headmistress says primly. “They’ve all learned multiple strains of martial arts and wrestling by the time they graduate. And we use running laps and weightlifting for discipline for infractions not serious enough to merit corporal punishment.” 

Tommy swallows, thinking about his own phys. ed. at Milton - tennis and swimming and horseback riding; about the senator playing basketball with half the staff, including Dan, every time; about Katie running three miles every morning to clear her head. 

“If you come this way, I’ll show you our rut holding rooms,” the headmistress prattles on. “They’re state of the art - we’ve cut our rate of serious injury in half since they were introduced.” 

“From what,” Reggie mutters as they walk. 

“There was a school in Boston that had three deaths my junior year,” Tommy murmurs in answer. “Couldn’t keep them from attacking each other.” 

Reggie shakes his head a little. “If you treat people like animals long enough.” 

Tommy frowns at his back as he follows him down the rubberized corridor, built without sharp edges, but feeling like an industrial tire. The schools don’t have all that much of a choice. Teenage alphas, especially on their first few ruts, are unpredictable. 

Still, the holding rooms do look a bit like prison cells when he peeks inside. It’s hard to imagine being locked in here, even while senseless with hormones.

“Thank you so much for the tour,” Obama is telling the headmistress. Tommy’s pretty sure it’s only his familiarity with Obama’s speech patterns that let him catch the clipped tension underneath the words. “I so enjoyed speaking with your students earlier.”

“We’ve never had a presidential candidate before,” she gushes. “I’m not sure how much you’re getting from them, but we appreciate your visit.” 

“Future voters,” Obama smiles, a little forced. “We’re talking to everyone.” 

***

The night they clinch the nomination, Tommy turns to give Jon a celebratory hug, and Jon’s not beside him. 

Tommy’s eyes seek him out in a few seconds; throwing his arms around _Dan’s_ shoulders. Even Dan looks a little surprised, but after a brief start, he hugs Jon back. Tommy can’t look away as Dan’s broad fingers curl, slow and tentative around Jon’s shoulder, not possessive at all, but somehow… reassuring-looking. Like a hand Tommy wouldn’t mind touching. 

Jon moves to hug Alyssa and Tommy can’t tear his eyes away from Dan’s quiet smile and hunched shoulders. Until Dan looks up and right into his eyes. _Fuck_. 

Tommy lifts his beer bottle in acknowledgment and turns, frantic, to grab Earnest and slap his back. “We did it!”

“We fucking did it,” Josh grins, “I need another drink, come on.”

When the celebration’s died down and they’re swaying back to the Pad, Tommy’s mind is still circling that hug. Jon’s leaning into him, tipsy, and Tommy can’t help himself from comparing the way Jon tucks under his shoulder neatly to the way he’d been so dwarfed by Dan’s arm. The way Jon had looked so comfortable, so easy, like he might belo- 

“Is that why you thought it was so ridiculous?” Tommy’s mouth blurts before he intends to speak. It wouldn’t be the craziest thing in the world, Jon’s already told his parents he intends to make his own choice of a partner and- “When I asked you about Dan and Alyssa? Are you and him?” 

Jon twists to stare at him, face contorting into a look that says, plain as day: _you goddamned idiot_. “You know, like, people can just be friends, right?” 

Tommy stumbles, "yeah but he's-"

“The best comms person around and a really great guy?" Jon cuts him off, sharp. 

"-an alpha" Tommy finishes, weakly, and he doesn't entirely believe himself as he says it. 

Jon rolls his eyes. “Sure Tommy,” he sighs, and takes three half-jogging steps to join O’Neill. 

“He is,” Tommy repeats to himself, pushing the weird twist in his stomach aside. 

Dan’s an alpha. Even if he knows the whole comms’ staff’s coffee order and brings a whole tray of drinks in on mornings after shitty nights. Even if Obama turns for his opinion on almost every issue and Dan looks vaguely shocked every time, but is always prepared and articulate. Even if Dan’s the one Jon goes to for edits on the speeches he’s most worried about. Even if Jon’s lying and there really is something there. 

Even if he’s the strangest alpha Tommy’s ever met and Tommy can’t figure him out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Katie’s characterization is obviously entirely a work of fiction


	2. Chapter 2

_Washington D.C., 2009_

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Jon frowns as he sets down Tommy’s last box. “Living here, I mean. I know O’Neill can be too, ahh, crude for you, and Lovett is… a lot.” 

He tries and fails to hide the smile that always lights up his face at the mention of his newest hire. Tommy doesn’t quite get it- the way Jon and Lovett hit it off instantly; the way Lovett pushes all of Jon’s buttons and disagrees with every point he makes and Jon just grins and laughs and challenges him right back; the way Lovett openly and forcefully decrys any mention of anyone’s dynamic, including his own beta status. The way Jon seems, after six months, like he might tell the entire world and his dream job to fuck off for this unattainable crush. 

“I’m fine,” Tommy insists, for what feels like the thousandth time. 

_I’m fine, Mom, we’ve been fighting for months_, when he called from Jon’s couch to tell her that Katie had kicked him out. 

_It’s fine, Dad. We didn’t bond, you know yourself that that’s a bad sign. I’m sorry you’ll have to explain it to the Ferrises, but it’s better now, before we get married, right?_ when his father called to berate him, to try to force him to go back to Katie on his knees, to cut him off, _you’ve got your fucking job anyway, support yourself_. 

_I’m fine, sir, but thank you_, when the goddamned President had stopped him in the hall to give him condolences on his broken engagement. _It won’t affect my work_. 

_I’m fine, maybe this is better anyway_, when he’d been able to go out for Happy Hour with his friends for the first time in months, without Katie holding him back with guilt or plans or-. _Just need to get off Jon’s couch, how have you all managed to find housing that isn’t falling apart? I don’t even have space for a rebound_, with just a little too much of a fake smile that he knows Jon and Alyssa caught - thinks Lovett caught too. It’s serendipitous really, that the aide from Treasury took the campaign job, that Cody and Mike and Lovett needed a new roommate, right on time. 

“Alright,” Jon says. _I don’t believe you_, his eyes say. “Just- you gotta let me know if this doesn’t work out, yeah? I was serious about selling my place and finding somewhere with two bedrooms.” 

“I know,” Tommy squeezes his elbow. He doesn’t mention that Jon makes more than double his salary, that Jon’s a light sleeper and Tommy keeps waking him up with his pacing, that he hates this feeling that he wouldn’t be afloat without his best friend. “This is gonna be good though. Maybe Cody will teach me to cook.” 

“Cody burns water,” Lovett says from the doorway, making them both jump a little. “He’s not allowed in the kitchen, house rules. But I can teach you, if you really want.”

“_You_ can cook,” Jon says skeptically. “You keep leaving half eaten takeout on your desk and the janitorial staff are after my head for it.”

“Not mutually exclusive,” Lovett whips back. “I don’t discriminate between food distribution systems.” 

“Takeout and homemade are not food distribution systems,” Jon counters, and they’re off. 

Tommy lets them go at it and surveys his new foam mattress. Sheets, first. The rest of his crumbling life can be mended later. 

***

“I can’t believe you’re _watching _this shit,” Lovett interrupts Julia Roberts’ monologue with a snarl. 

Tommy sighs and hits pause before he turns to glare. He didn’t think Lovett was gonna be home tonight or he’d have curled up with his laptop instead of leaving himself open in the living room. “_Love, Bonding, Marriage_ is one of the best stories of all time.”

“It’s fucked up deterministic bullshit, is what it is,” Lovett drops to the couch next to him. “Poor Julia wasting herself with all these betas and omegas and denying that what she really needs is some emotionally stunted, idiotic alpha to carry her around.” 

“They fall in love,” Tommy sighs patiently. “They _bond_.” 

“Yeah and I had three relationships that were healthier than this one in college and one was even with an alpha,” Lovett says mockingly. “It’s Hollywood bullshit designed to brainwash the public, and I for one, thought you were smarter than this.” 

Tommy’s brain is stuck a few sentences back. “_You’ve_ dated an alpha?” he says incredulously. Lovett’s- even beyond the beta thing- Lovett’s far too demanding for that. “Did he beat you into submission? Or was he just too slow to even realize you were a million miles ahead of him?”

Lovett hits him with a pillow, hard. 

“Ouch,” Tommy rubs his arm. 

“You’re lucky it wasn’t my fist,” Lovett glares, eyes fiery. Then he sits back abruptly, eyebrows arching. “You were fucking _engaged_ to an alpha, how’d you manage if you hated her so much for being who she is?” 

“I didn’t_ hate_-” Tommy starts, weakly. He didn’t hate Katie. He doesn’t hate alphas. It’s just biology that she was, that they are-

“Right,” Lovett says, voice hard. “She’s just from a good enough family that they drilled every instinct out of her and you could manage her, I forgot.” 

“That’s not…” Tommy sighs, thinking about the private school in North Carolina. “Alphas are different, Lovett, they just are. Katie knew how to control herself, sure, but she still-” 

“Needed you to tell her right from wrong?” 

“Needed me!” Tommy snaps. “I had to handle all our money and if I didn’t remind her to grocery shop, we’d never have had food in the house and she couldn’t fucking talk to any of my friends normally, you know that!” 

“That’s just cause she’s a person Tommy,” Lovett sighs. “People have flaws. Some alphas are none of those things.”

Unbidden, Tommy thinks of Dan, ordering chicken fingers on the phone for election night, adjusting numbers on the fly to account for the orders and RSVPs people were screaming all around him. 

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Tommy sighs, tossing Lovett the remote. He’s not sure he can watch Julia guide Tim Robbins, who he’s pretty sure is a beta in real life - thank you Lovett for the rant on beta-washing in Hollywood last week - through moving into her apartment now anyway. “You pick something _acceptable_ to watch.”

***

“Add the onions now,” Lovett instructs, leaning close to Tommy as he stirs the tomato sauce in the skillet. 

Tommy carefully tips the cutting board and grins in triumph when none of it spills. “I’m getting better,” he beams at Lovett. 

“You are,” Lovett laughs, “but don’t get cocky yet.” 

Tommy rolls his eyes and looks back at the simmering skillet. This is the most complicated thing Lovett’s tried to teach him, and it’s mostly simple ingredients but it smells wonderful. 

“Damn,” Mike calls from the hallway as the door slams behind him and- 

“Did you make enough to share?” Cody’s home too. 

“No,” Tommy calls with a laugh. “Feed your own damn selves.” 

“Thought you were going out tonight,” Lovett hops onto the counter as the guys grab in the fridge for beers, kicking his legs against the cabinet. “Trolling for quick lays?” 

“Eh,” Cody sighs. “Maybe after dinner.” 

“Kristen turned him down again,” Mike laughs. “Tommy, you gotta come with me, you’re not taking enough advantage of your free man status.” 

“Fuck off,” Tommy rolls his eyes. “I fucking hate the kind of clubs you go to. I don’t want to go home with random alphas who can’t take a fucking no.” 

Lovett’s leg stops swinging.

“Fuck a beta?” Cody’s eyebrows go up. 

Tommy scoffs and doesn’t dignify that with a response. “You know the kind of prims in those places.” He’d gone clubbing one weekend, right after they started in the Senate, and all he could think about the whole time was the dire warnings about alcohol boosting his scent, and desperate unpaired alphas, descending on the few available omegas. “I’m not into that.” 

“Oh fuck off,” Lovett bites out, sudden and bitter. 

“Lovett,” Cody frowns. “We’re just fucking around.” 

“Not you,” Lovett rolls his eyes. “Though god knows you’re assholes too. I mean this one,” swiveling to stare at Tommy, “with your fucking bullshit inability to empathize or think for yourself. And how many times do I have to fucking tell you to _stop _using that slur?”

“Lovett,” Tommy frowns. He _is _trying to cut prim out of his vocabulary if only to stop Lovett glaring. “I’m just-” 

“I know you’re just.” Lovett snaps. “You’re just perfectly happy to go along with whatever stereotypical _biology_ you were taught. Alphas aren’t any fucking less likely to not ‘take a no’ than anyone else.” 

“You don’t hear about omegas or betas raping people and leaving them to die in a park,” Tommy counters, blood rising. “You helped write the fucking statement on the alphas who did that two weeks ago.” 

“You don’t hear about it because our whole system is designed to protect omegas,” Lovett glares at him. “Do you remember Jim Hollis? He was on the Clinton campaign, best advance guy in the business?” 

Cody hisses in a breath across the kitchen. 

Tommy frowns. He vaguely remembers the guy. Saw him a few times from the distance maybe. He didn’t know he was an alpha, that the Clinton campaign had alpha staffers too until- “Yeah, he died right before the general, right? There are all kinds of conspiracies about it from the rightwing nuts.” 

“Yeah,” Lovett says voice cracking a little. “He, ah, we were pretty good friends - he was a couple years ahead of me in college.” 

“Lovett, I’m so-” Tommy starts. 

Lovett cuts him off. “First weekend in Nevada, he’s out scoping out a space for a rally and wandered into a bachelorette party at the wrong time. No one fucking believed him, after. He was an alpha, the omega was in heat, _of course_ he couldn’t control himself and only claimed it wasn’t consensual when he realized it could turn into a scandal cause her dad donated a fuckton of money to McCain.” 

Tommy feels frozen. He’d heard about that, some of the volunteers in Iowa chortling about a Clinton staffer and-

“He wasn’t ever the same again,” Lovett continues bitterly. “We couldn’t get him into therapy, he was sure that no therapist was gonna treat him like a rape victim either. He committed suicide, Tommy. Because you don’t fucking hear about alphas getting raped.” 

“_Lovett_,” Tommy tries again. 

“The Youth Alphas Advocacy Network did a study,” Lovett says coldly. “I’m sure you haven’t read it. Alphas have sex younger than any other dynamic, everyone knows that, right? But they found that more than half of those teenagers who reported sex hadn’t consented. They hadn’t been taught what to do when they first went into rut or they were around when omega siblings or friends went into heat or they’d been-” He shakes his head. “I know the _high class_ alphas you know were managed and groomed and occasionally loved, but Tommy you have no fucking idea how bad it can be.” 

He doesn’t wait for Tommy to close his mouth and find words before he stalks out of the kitchen. 

Cody doesn’t wait for Tommy to ask the questions swirling through his mind: _why don’t I? _and _does everyone else know?_ and _but Katie never cared if I wanted it when she did_ and _what about Dan?_

Mike bumps his shoulder a little as he opens another beer, “seriously, if you wanna come with us, no one’s gonna fuck with you,” he says, in what must be meant to be a comforting tone. 

The pasta sauce burns. 

***

“Tommy.” 

Tommy jumps in his seat and deletes three lines of his email eviscerating the intern from The Hill who sent him the fifth stupid question about the press conference with Komorowski. 

When he looks up from his monitor, Dan’s standing above him, foot tapping restlessly even as his mouth twists into a wry smile at Tommy’s discombobulation. 

“Sorry,” Tommy takes his hand off his keyboard. “What did you need?” 

“I need you to call Jake Tapper and tell him to delete his fucking tweet,” Dan frowns. He hands Tommy a printout of the tweet in question; inaccurate, but largely harmless. 

“You know,” Tommy sighs, picking up his phone. “This would be a lot easier if you’d let us have our own Twitter access.” 

“IT isn’t sure about the security yet,” Dan says rotely. “Get it down.” 

Tommy rolls his eyes as Dan turns on his heel and hurries back across the bullpen to his office. More like Dan’s a control freak who likes being the Twitter czar. This is the fifth time this week. It’s like he thinks the next global war is going to be started via a tweet that the Post wouldn’t give two Pinocchios. 

Tommy laughs to himself as Tapper’s secretary picks up. He has to remember the Pinocchios joke for Lovett. They’ve got a running list of things they’d tweet about Dan’s Twitter clenchhold. 

“Tell your boss to do his own dirty work,” Tapper sighs after Tommy’s sufficiently beaten him down. “I’m not afraid of him.” 

“Pfeiffer’s too busy to deal with your nonsense,” Tommy laughs easily and hangs up. 

“Being the most annoying boss in the world,” he mutters once the receiver clicks. 

His left wrist twinges with the faint echo of the pressure of his missing cuff. Tommy rubs at the fading tan line left behind absently. He’s surprised by how much he doesn’t miss it - as proud as he was the day Katie put it on him when they announced their engagement.

It used to mean security - a promise that he’d never have to yell at people on the phone to make a living. It used to mean he was doing something right; until the last few months when it felt so so wrong. 

It used to mean he had an alpha. To provide for him and fuck him and protect him and give him children and-

To boss him around and treat him like a child. To boldly insist she knew best and belittle Tommy’s every suggestion. To- 

_“Your fucking job, Tommy, it’s giving you all kinds of stupid ideas. Your soft alpha boss who couldn’t take care of a _dog_ let alone a needy omega like you.” _

The loss of the cuff was supposed to mean vulnerability, not freedom. 

And yet.

The only person who bosses him around is Lovett, making a sticker chart like they’re children to make Tommy do his fair share of the dishes. 

The only person who questions his judgment when he wants to buy an extra bag of cheetos is Jon, who just gets more insistent about his invitations to go for a run on the Mall on early weekend mornings - peaceful and companionable. 

The only burden on his choices is the best job he could imagine and the freedom to be a little rude to the press when they step over the line. 

The only alpha he interacts with daily is Dan. Who might be the most annoying boss in the entire world, but who, Tommy realizes with a start, he barely even thinks of as an alpha anymore. 

He lets go of his wrist and turns back to his email. 

***

“No, you’re just an asshole,” Alyssa is glaring at Lovett when Tommy walks up to their table at 1831. 

“Why now?” Tommy grins and sets the perilous glasses in his hands in front of her. 

“Look who finally decided to grace us with his presence,” Lovett smirks up at him. “You missed the whole first round of trivia.” 

“Sorry, briefing ran long,” Tommy shrugs as Jon slides into Lovett to make a space for Tommy between Jon and Alyssa. “I got a round to make up for it, don’t hate me forever.” 

“Never,” Jon grins at him. 

“Only since you got drinks,” Lovett shakes his head. “My affection _can_ be bought by $15 cocktails, thank you very much.” 

“Did they take the line about the trade embargo?” Dan leans around Alyssa. “I called a couple people earlier to start them down the trail.” 

“Yeah,” Tommy nods at him. “I think we’re good.” 

“No fucking shop talk,” Alyssa rolls her eyes. “The second round is reality TV themed Thomas, what’s your contribution?” 

A lot of _The Amazing Race_ after the breakup, Tommy thinks. “Ah, _America’s Funniest Home Videos_? My dad watched a lot of _This Old House_ on the weekends when I was growing up.”

“Useless,” Alyssa sighs. “All on us Pfeiffer.” 

Dan bumps her fist, “easy money.” 

To Tommy’s - and judging by his increasingly arching eyebrows, Lovett’s - surprise, it does appear to be easy money. Dan and Alyssa sweep the category, up until the last question. 

“Who won season twelve of _The Amazing Race_?” 

“I have no fucking clue,” Alyssa sits back in her chair, face twisting. 

“It’s TK and Rachel,” Tommy mutters, half-hoping no one will hear him. 

“Really?” Dan leans towards him with a smile. Tommy’s stomach flips. How does he catch _everything_?

“Yeah, they were on the season with all bonded pairs and it was like they could read every thought the other had,” Tommy says in a rush.

Alyssa grins and scribbles it onto the answer sheet, handing it to the server doubling as a trivia host before hi-fiving Tommy. “You’re not such dead weight after all.”

“Fuck you,” he grins at her. “Wait ‘til we draw a baseball category.” 

Dan laughs “I think we’ve got sports pretty well covered. Art might be our biggest weakness and the next category’s Fine Art.” 

Lovett grins, “you lack imagination Dan, this is my well-honed bullshitting skill’s time to shine.”

“You use your bullshitting ‘skill’ every hour of the day,” Jon snorts. “I’m gonna get another round of drinks, everyone in?” 

***

“I don’t understand why you couldn’t have met us at our hotel,” Tommy’s dad says, looking around the entryway to the house with disdain. 

“Thought you might want to see where I’m living, my mistake,” Tommy mutters tersely. “I just need to grab something from my room, I’ll be right back.”

He takes the steps two at a time, regretting inviting them to visit, regretting bringing them home, regretting every time he let that look in his father’s eye dictate his choices. Fuck him if he doesn’t like Tommy’s life, he doesn’t have to live it.

When he comes back down with his forgotten wallet, he hears, “actually no I don’t think so,” before he sees Lovett’s glare. Directed at his father and stepmother. 

Lovett’s hands are on his hips and Dad’s looming over him a little. Tommy’s heart skips a beat.

“Lovett,” Tommy greets too brightly. “I didn’t think you’d be home early, don’t you guys have that big energy speech?” 

“I was about to kill Jon, so he told me to take a walk,” Lovett shrugs. “I’ll go back in an hour or so and bring him coffee and he’ll forgive me.” 

Tommy rolls his eyes. “You’re a fantastic employee.” 

Lovett smirks, “he’d be lost without me. You didn’t do the dishes.”

“I know, I’m gonna,” Tommy frowns. 

“You’re two stickers from pizza, don’t fuck up now,” Lovett blows him a kiss with a sidelong glance at his dad and then disappears upstairs. 

“Let’s go,” Tommy says sharply, before Dad can say whatever he’s gonna. 

“You ought to get a maid,” Jeanne says once they’re on the sidewalk. 

“None of us can afford it,” Tommy rolls his eyes. “Should we get a taxi to dinner or walk?” 

It’s quickest on the Metro, but they wouldn’t be caught dead on public transit. Heaven forbid Thomas Vietor brush elbows with someone who doesn’t have a maid. 

“See, son, this is why this whole endeavor is ridiculous,” Dad glares, as Tommy manages to hail a car. “You don’t belong here. You’ve let one perfectly good match go, but we can find another, and then you wouldn’t have to live with those _people_.” 

“Dad!” Tommy glares, something deep within him snapping. “Those people are my friends. This ‘endeavor’ is my _dream job_. My ‘perfectly good match’ was a relationship that made me _miserable_. I’m not quitting, I’m not coming home, and you don’t get to control my life anymore.” 

“Well then,” his father shakes his head. “This city has ruined you Tommy.” 

“This city has made me,” Tommy says, a little meeker. He feels settled, better, with that on the table. “Can we just go get dinner and not fight?”

“No one but you is fighting,” his father glares. “But yes, you can be polite for the rest of the evening.” 

Tommy rolls his eyes and watches out the window as the street rolls by. One night. He can do it. 

***

“Pass me the popcorn,” Lovett orders. 

“You can literally reach it,” Tommy sighs, but grabs for it, sliding it across Jon’s coffee table. 

Lovett grins at him from the floor, his head leaning back against Jon’s hip, Jon’s hand carding through his hair absently. “Thank you Thomas.” 

“Sure,” Tommy says distractedly. Jon’s hand moving slow and steady, makes him think of Dan’s hand, moving through the air forcefully. “It was just _so weird_. He’s normally so restrained.” 

“Tommy,” Jon sighs, “we’ve been over this. Dan yells at reporters all the time, he just doesn’t do it in lower press.” 

“No, I _know_,” Tommy sighs irritatedly. “So you’ve said.” 

Dan got in a fight with a Times reporter three days ago, taking the phone from Jen’s desk after reading an email. He’d slammed his hand down on the desk, voice rising to a level Tommy’s not sure he’s heard _anyone_ use in the White House, let alone Dan, unnaturally soft spoken even under immense pressure. 

“People outside his office close his door all the time when he’s on the phone,” Lovett contributes. “I feel like we hear him yelling on the phone at least once a week.” 

“Your office isn’t anywhere near Dan’s,” Tommy glares. It’s not like Lovett has some special access that he doesn’t. Tommy works with Dan every fucking day. 

“Jon’s across the hall,” Lovett shrugs. 

Jon sighs a little. “It’s annoying, honestly. Can we start the movie?” 

Lovett grins. “Now _this_ is a film. You uncultured swine are gonna learn to appreciate good entertainment or I’m gonna die trying.” 

Tommy huffs and leans back into the arm of the couch as Lovett presses play. Jon pokes Tommy’s thigh with his foot, _okay?_ Tommy shrugs back at him. 

He honestly doesn’t know why he can’t get over this. 

It had been so startling, at first. Tommy was reading a news article, totally absorbed in his work. Then all of a sudden, screaming. 

It took him a minute to figure out it was Dan and then he couldn’t look away. 

Dan doesn’t- it was the Dan Tommy had expected, when he first met him. Angry and bossy and _alpha_; the hairs on Tommy’s neck standing up in instinctive alertness. 

At the same time, Dan was totally in control, taking the reporter apart piece by piece, and Tommy’s terror turned to fascination and something else he hasn’t found a name for yet. 

“Hang on, who’s that?” Jon interrupts his train of thought. 

“You’re the worst, I swear,” Lovett sighs, pausing the movie. “Let me at least get another beer while I explain the basic plot to you. That’s Harris, he works for the evil genius. Except he’s actually doublecrossing him-” 

“Spoiler!” Jon and Tommy chorus in unison. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Lovett sighs, tossing them each a bottle. Jon’s goes wide and he barely manages to catch it before it hits the ground. “And then the big angry guy - Tommy you’ll like him - is the actual man behind the curtain of this spy op…”

“I don’t,” Tommy sighs. “It was just _weird_. Forgive me for being weirded out by seeing my boss tear someone to shreds with words. He called him a backwardsass nincompoop it was beautiful.” 

“Yeah Tommy, we get it, angry Dan is hot,” Lovett sighs, annoyed. 

“What?!” Tommy splutters. “I didn’t say-” 

Jon chokes on his beer, curling into himself laughing. 

“It’s true,” Lovett shrugs, smirking with glee as Jon keeps laughing, tipping off the couch and nearly hitting his head. 

“Jesus, Jon,” Tommy reaches out a hand, half tempted to drop him back to the ground. “It wasn’t _that_ funny.” 

“_Your face!_” Jon giggles. “I wish you could see your own fucking face.” 

“Let’s watch the fucking movie,” Tommy sighs, throwing popcorn at him. 

Idiots. He’s surrounded by idiots. 

He doesn’t think Dan is hot. Angry Dan or normal Dan. 

He’s just whip smart and terrifyingly competent and knows the answer to everything from reality TV trivia to the obscure law that Tommy needed to cite in an email the other day. He’s just got a way with words and a voice that makes a persuasive case. 

He’s just patient with his own staff and brutal to people who cross them, one of the President’s most trusted advisors. 

He’s just tall and broad and strong. 

Maybe, Tommy sinks into the cushions, he’s a little hot. That’s alright. He can have a hot boss. Lovett certainly does. 

He looks sideways at his idiot friends. Lovett’s head is fully in Jon’s lap and Tommy’s not jealous, not even a little bit. Jon would probably pet his hair if he asked and Tommy certainly doesn’t want that. 

Jon’s hands are slender and delicate. Writer’s hands, pianist fingers. They’re not strong and muscled like Dan’s hands. They look graceful, flying through the air when he talks but they’ve never made Tommy feel that rush of fear and admiration and…

Arousal. 

Fuck. 


	3. Chapter 3

_Washington D.C., 2011_

Lovett’s throwing things in moving boxes when Tommy gets home from work. 

The rumor mill was right then. 

“You really quit?” Tommy asks without preamble. “Why the hell would you leave _this job_?” 

“Some things are more important than the job.” Lovett doesn’t turn around, his shoulders hunched in a way that looks painful. “I can’t do this anymore.” 

“What are you going to do?” Tommy asks, a little more desperate than he intends to be. Lovett can’t leave. Lovett’s a tornado, picking apart all his walls and assumptions. Lovett’s a pain in his ass; making him wash dishes and do laundry and call the power company when the heat goes out. Lovett’s the only person who can make him laugh after a long day.

Lovett is one of his best friends. 

“Los Angeles,” Lovett says shortly. “Hand me that hat?” Tommy passes it over, feeling a little numb. “Try my hand at writing something that can’t crash the economy or nuke an international deal,” Lovett continues after a moment. “Maybe meet some people that aren’t _repressed, uptight, dynamic-obsessed assholes._” 

Tommy flinches, but Lovett’s ire, for once, doesn’t seem to be directed at him. It’s directed at the hat in Lovett’s hands, that, Tommy realizes, Jon bought when they dragged Lovett to the Nationals-Sox game a few months ago. 

Lovett had bitched the whole way to the stadium, pressed between Dan and a very disgruntled Nats fan on the Metro. He’d bitched during the whole climb to their seats, whined about the sun in his eyes, whined about the _excess of sweat_ in the stands. 

Jon bought him a beer, a hat, and an ice cream cone. By the homer in the top of the sixth, Lovett had nacho cheese on his nose and was standing with the rest of them, earning merciless teasing from Tommy, Cody, and Dan, but a sheepish, besotted smile from Jon. 

Lovett shakes the hat and throws it back at Tommy. “Keep this, I don’t like the fucking Red Sox.” 

“Gotta become a Dodgers fan now,” Tommy says as levelly as he can manage, in lieu of asking more questions Lovett clearly doesn’t want to answer. 

“Right,” Lovett snorts. “I’m gonna stick to comedy clubs, not sports stadiums.” 

“Your loss,” Tommy sighs. 

Lovett finally turns to look at him, eyes hollowed and dark. “Yeah,” he echoes, “my loss.” 

***

“You should call him,” Tommy says for what feels like the millionth time since Lovett quit and Jon turned into the most miserable, mopey toddler in an adult’s body he’s ever seen. 

They’re sitting in a hotel ballroom turned cafeteria in Egypt and Jon hasn’t even cracked a smile at the weird breakfast foods Tommy piled on his plate - usually a surefire way to entertain him on a foreign trip. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jon says for the millionth time. “Let me drink my coffee in peace, Jesus.” 

He’d admitted, last week, drunk, _I just miss him, okay?_ and _he doesn’t want to talk to me, I can’t call him_. Tommy feels no closer to the truth of what happened than he’d felt two months ago, but he’s sure that they’re both miserable. 

“Anyone seen Dan?” Ben asks, dropping to the table next to Tommy. “We were supposed to meet up before breakfast to go over this press release, but he didn’t show.” 

“No,” Tommy frowns, looking around the room. Everyone else from their team is down, shoveling powdered eggs and flatbread into their mouths while they argue about strategies for today’s summit meetings. “He looked kinda sick on the plane yesterday, really pale.”

“I’ll go check his room,” Jon volunteers instantly, shooting out of his seat. 

“Thought you were having a love affair with your coffee,” Tommy glares at his retreating back. 

“What is with him anyway?” Ben asks, reaching for a funny colored muffin Tommy had shoved to a napkin when Jon didn’t respond to his jokes about mummified flour. “Are you gonna eat this?”

“Nah,” Tommy shakes his head. “I don’t know, he won’t say shit. But it’s really fucking annoying.” 

“He’s behind on his speeches too,” Ben mutters around a full mouth. “He’s gotta shape up, whatever it is.” 

Tommy sighs. “Wanna help me get him drunk again? I almost got him to spill last time.” 

“You’re on,” Ben agrees immediately. “The bar down the street charges like a twenty dollar cover though so we should-” 

“Guys,” Jon interrupts, face pale. “Where’s Bill?” 

Tommy points across the room. “What’s wrong?” 

Jon’s face twists. “Dan’s in rut.” 

***

After the excitement of the first morning, the first three days of the summit fly by in a blur. 

Tommy shakes hands with dozens of attachés, collects business cards from a few, almost invites one to his hotel room. He nearly dozes off in one meeting and learns a fascinating amount about oil recirculation and ocean leak protection in another. He makes Jon tie his bowtie while they’re struggling into tuxes for the state dinner and Jon almost cracks a smile. Tommy and Ben try and fail to drag Jon out of his hotel room, go to the bar alone, and get rejected by the bouncer. 

The entire time, Tommy’s brain keeps flitting back to Dan. Egypt is a very traditional country. _Furiously backwards,_ Lovett snaps in his head. Alphas get funneled into agricultural labor, have restricted hours when they can be in the streets to “prevent violence”, and are shut in old fashioned rut cells if their families can’t adequately sequester them. 

After Jon came down from Dan’s room with a woozy face from hormone-laden air, Bill spent nearly an hour yelling at the hotel staff to keep Dan from being dragged to one of those cells. 

Obama himself had gotten involved at the end, managing to negotiate a quarantine zone that resembles a Red Cross outbreak set up. The entire floor of the hotel was cleared, as well as the floors above and below, the elevator buttons blocked off with caution tape. Tommy doesn’t want to think about what the crew of muscled betas - to resist contact rut or heat - had done to Dan’s room. 

_Fucking hell, can someone send him up chicken fingers?_ Alyssa had texted Tommy, Jon, and Ben twelve hours later, after news of the debacle must have gotten home. _This is a nightmare_.

Dan’s never _not_ had his rut leave perfectly scheduled, since the campaign. He’s a monster about making sure they’re all prepped for it, his suppressants must have failed, or- 

Tommy can’t stop thinking about Dan. Alone and probably embarrassed as hell. And likely madder that he can’t micromanage the trip than that he’s locked in. 

The last session before lunch on the third day is focused on comms strategies for the agreements reached yesterday. Tommy takes the most detailed notes he’s ever taken in his life, even though the interpreters and stenographers are recording every word in four languages. 

“When did you become so fascinated in search engine optimization?” Jon smirks at him as they wait in the lunch line. “You looked like that guy was telling you the best story you’d ever heard.”

“It’s good to be detail-oriented,” Tommy retorts, and grabs the last roll before Jon can get it. “Not that you’d know.”

“Fuck off,” Jon rolls his eyes and leads the way to a mostly full table of their coworkers, dropping next to Ben on the bench. “Can anyone get the score of the game to load?”

“Nothing,” Jen sighs. “The wifi in this place is abysmal.” 

“Like there isn’t anything important going on,” Tommy rolls his eyes. “Think we could use the work hotspot for thirty seconds?” 

“If you want to get fired,” Ben snorts. 

“I think it counts as a public issue,” Jon retorts quickly. “If you consider our mental stamina to be important to the success of the summit, it’s really-” 

Tommy’s distracted from Jon’s bullshitting by a prickling feeling of being watched. He looks up and towards the door and freezes. 

Dan’s standing in the entrance to the cafeteria, looking more unsure than Tommy’s ever seen him. His eyes look, even from fifteen feet away, bloodshot and red-rimmed; he looks pale and sweaty and a little unsteady on his feet. Most striking is the way his eyes are darting around, wide and uncertain, like he thinks the room is full of enemies. 

Their eyes meet and Dan flinches back like Tommy’s gaze has burned him. 

Tommy calls his name before he can think twice. “Dan, c’mon.” Next to him, Tommy can feel Jon look up and wave Dan over too, knows Jon is smiling, open and happy. 

Tommy scoots away from Jon on the bench as Dan approaches, footsteps still uncharacteristically tentative. Dan always seems to be trying not to take up space, but he’s usually so _confident_. 

“Sit,” Tommy urges. “And tell Ben that finding out the score of the game will make us all better representatives for the country this afternoon.

“Um,” Dan murmurs, lost. 

“We can’t get it on our phones,” Jen jumps in. “And these lunatics think we should be using the backchannel to get it.” 

Jon slides back into his argument effortlessly while Tommy watches Dan out of the corner of his eye. Dan’s blinking in confusion, his foot tapping under the table with nervous energy. Like he didn’t expect them to welcome him back, Tommy realizes. 

It takes a few minutes, but eventually Dan speaks. “Jon, just imagine for me, trying to explain to the press why the chief speechwriter _wasted taxpayer dollars_ to find out the score of a _football game_. Absolutely you are not allowed.” 

Tommy grins, even as they lose the argument, and slides his roll towards Dan on a napkin. 

***

“Jon, when are you gonna have the-” 

Tommy stops short in the doorway of Jon’s office, feeling his jaw hit the floor.

Lovett is in Jon’s office, which, in itself, makes sense. He’s been in DC for three days, helping with the Correspondents’ Dinner speech and avoiding Jon like the plague whenever they’re not working with Cody and Adam. 

Except- Lovett is in Jon’s _lap_ in Jon’s office. Lovett is in Jon’s lap, and Tommy knows the posture of two people who’ve just been interrupted in the midst of making out. 

Lovett and Jon are making out in Jon’s office. 

Lovett and Jon haven’t spoken in _months_. 

“What the _fuck_?” Tommy’s voice rises into something embarrassingly like a squeak at the end. “Guys?”

“Ah… hi Tom,” Jon says sheepishly. “Sorry, I’ve got that draft on my desk.”

Tommy’s forgotten all about the draft. “Fuck the draft,” he waves his hand, as Lovett giggles, no doubt at his expense. “What the fuck is happening _here_?”

Lovett grins at him. “It’s kiss your former coworkers day Tommy, haven’t you heard?” He reaches towards Tommy like he’s gonna pull him down for his own kiss, except he doesn’t budge from Jon’s lap and Jon’s hands tighten possessively on Lovett’s hips, so the joke doesn’t really land.

“Lovett,” Tommy glares. 

Lovett sighs and relents. “Sorry, okay. Ah… Jon and I are…” he glances at Jon, face alight with hope and- “together now.”

“We are,” Jon grins back with the adoring smile that Tommy hasn’t seen since Lovett left. Has never seen directed at anyone _except_ Lovett, if he thinks about it. 

Tommy looks between them, brain reeling. “You’re-” 

“Tommy I swear to god if the next words out of your mouth include omega and beta I’m going to punch you,” Lovett warns.

“Hypocrite,” Jon laughs, before Tommy can protest that his next sentence was the much stupider: _you’re together?_

“Fuck off,” Lovett grins at him. 

Jon rolls his eyes and looks at Tommy fondly. “Yesterday he said _what does it matter anyway? I’m a beta and you’re an omega, we never had a chance_,” he explains. “He’s a goddamned hypocrite, all these years of telling us its pseudoscientific deterministic bullshit.”

“I thought _you_ thought so!” Lovett protests. “How else was I supposed to interpret _we can’t do this_ when we almost hooked up in September.” 

“You hooked up?” Tommy shakes his head. “That’s why you left? Jon’s been acting like a lovesick puppy for months cause you couldn’t fucking _talk_ to each other?”

“Ah… yeah,” Jon says sheepishly. 

“You were _pining_?” Lovett crows. 

“He was pitiful,” Tommy grins. “I’ll tell you all about it at drinks?” 

“Please,” Lovett grins. “We should be done by eight.” 

“You guys,” Jon sighs long-sufferingly. His Lovett smile hasn’t left his face, Tommy notices, even as his face gets a little more serious. “Ah, you’re cool with this Tom?” 

“Of course,” Tommy grins, a little surprised by how much he means it. “I’m really happy for you guys. But you might wanna be more discreet at work, you know Lew’s on the whole professionalism kick.” 

Jon pales a little. “You’re right. I’ll, ah… Can you close the door on your way out?” 

“Not what I meant,” Tommy rolls his eyes. 

He does close the door, letting the sound of Lovett’s happy giggle follow him down the hall and all the way back to the drudgery of his inbox. 

***

“Fuck,” Lovett giggles as the tennis ball Cody tossed at him flies overboard. 

“You’re gonna kill so much marine life,” Dan sighs, grabbing another. “Thank god we don’t have anything expensive to play with.” 

“Maybe,” Alyssa drawls from under her sunhat, “playing catch on a boat is a terrible idea.” 

“Maybe,” Cody says in the same tone, “Lovett needs to use some of his new free time to learn to _fucking catch_.” 

“Hard pass,” Lovett rolls his eyes as the new ball drops from his fingers and rolls along the deck to Jon. 

Jon picks it up lazily and tosses it to Dan. “You’re perfect the way you are babe.” 

Tommy, Cody, and Alyssa make gagging sounds in unison. Jon and Lovett have been together for a little over two months and the honeymoon phase doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. 

Tommy wolf whistles and ignores the tiny tug of jealousy in his stomach as Lovett slides into Jon’s lap for a kiss. They’re so fucking happy, he’s equal parts over it and furiously envious of the ease of it. 

“Just you and me, Cody,” Dan snorts, throwing the ball back. 

Tommy’s eyes slide unbidden from Jon’s hands in Lovett’s hair to Dan’s arm, arched in the air at the perfect angle. They slide down Dan’s arm to his broad shoulders, a loose Hawaiian print shirt hanging off them; from the fabric to the gap between the undone buttons, to Dan’s lightly defined stomach, showing the evidence of too many late night chicken fingers next to the innate power of his frame, dusted with soft looking curls of hair. Tommy blinks and looks up to Dan’s face, laughter making dozens of comfortable lines that Tommy’s fingers ache to trace. 

He doesn’t get to see his friends like this much anymore, loose and open and smiling in the sunset on a summer Wednesday. It’s a nice feeling, a change from the normal pressures of their lives.

“Hey,” Jon’s elbow interrupts Tommy’s thoughts. 

“What?” Tommy twists towards him. Lovett’s gone from his lap, pleading with Cody to give him “one more chance, please Coco,” while Alyssa giggles.

“I have a question for you,” Jon murmurs, fingers twisting nervously. “A proposal, if you will.” 

“Lovett’s not here anymore,” Tommy deadpans, before the look in Jon’s eyes makes him relent. “What’s up Jon?”

“Ahh,” Jon sighs, “Okay. I’m leaving. After the re-elect, either way.”

“_What?_” Tommy yelps. 

“Shh,” Jon’s eyes flick to the others. “I’m moving to LA, with Lovett. I’m exhausted Tom, you know this can’t go on forever. I want to start the rest of my life, with Lovett. And, with you, if you’ll-” he sighs a little. “I’ve done this backwards. I can’t really leave politics I don’t think, I was thinking I’d consult, and, well, I’ll need a partner.”

“Jon,” Tommy breathes. He can’t _leave_. He’s worked too hard to get _here_. To be free to work this job and fall on his own face and make his own choices. “I love this job.”

“Me too,” Jon urges. “But why not leave while we still love it?”

“I don’t know,” Tommy shakes his head. 

“Fuck!” Alyssa yelps, interrupting the game and their conversation with her blackberry in the air. 

“What’s up?” Dan’s at her side immediately, buttoning his shirt. Tommy watches his fingers moving to hide the relaxation and the curls with regret as Dan slips back into business mode. 

“SCOTUS is gonna release the Sebelius decision tomorrow morning,” she sighs. “We gotta go into the office.” 

“Fuck,” Jon bites his lip. “The speeches are mostly done. Any indication which one-?”

The question hangs in the air, all of them waiting for the fate of the ACA and their hardest work. 

Alyssa shakes her head. “Nothing more than oral arguments. Someone tell the captain to go back in, we’ll have to leisure cruise another time.” 

“Think about it,” Jon murmurs at Tommy’s side as they pack up the picnic. “No more of this.” 

Tommy shakes his head. “I can’t, Jon.”

***

Summer drags into fall and the re-elect shifts from a nebulous future event that Tommy can mostly ignore when a reporter isn’t pestering him about it to a pain in every person at the White House’s ass, every second of every day. 

The worst part is that he still can’t do anything, thanks Hatch Act, even as it consumes everything. They watch the debates on their falling-in living room couch, Tommy and Cody both screaming at the screen when either POTUS or Romney fuck up, when the questions are stupid, when the spin room afterwards gets particularly inane. 

Tommy doesn’t miss the spin room, but it sure felt more useful than drinking beer and throwing popcorn. 

He doesn’t miss the endless hotels of the campaign trail, but when he has to sit in on a meeting about naval supplies for the fifth time after Romney’s failed zinger, he thinks he’d give anything to be on a lumpy motel mattress, eating shitty pizza and dialing hundreds of supporters on a burner phone, rather than trying not to fall asleep while he takes notes about submachine guns on submarines. 

He does miss the camaraderie of the campaign, when he turns a corner in the West Wing and almost runs into an intern who growls at him. Actually, full on _growls_. 

Tommy’s still standing there, dumbfounded, when Alyssa waves her hand in his face. “Earth to Tommy.”

“Sorry,” Tommy shakes his head. “An intern just growled at me?” 

Alyssa snorts in amusement, because she's an asshole, then invites, “come into my office, I have cookies,” because she’s his favorite asshole. 

“I have… requisition forms for you,” Tommy winces, digging through the pile of paperwork as he sits. 

“You’re running messages from the brass now?” Alyssa raises her eyebrows. 

“No work beneath me,” Tommy quips back, handing her the forms, “And I’m always happy to see you.” 

She grins back at him. “I’m glad to see you too, rather than another grumpy intern.” 

“Why are they so bad this year?” Tommy asks exasperatedly. “None of them are fucking pleasant.”

“I think it’s because of the election,” Alyssa sighs, leaning back in her chair. “We’re understaffed and not running as sharply as we should be and everyone is stressed as hell. I think a lot of people are taking it out on the interns and- nasty cycle.” 

Tommy sighs. “You’re probably right. I’m gonna be glad when the whole thing’s over.”

“Same,” Alyssa grins, offering him another cookie as her phone rings. “Shit, I gotta get that. Lunch soon, Tommy.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, pushing to his feet. “Thanks for the cookies.” 

He feels like he hasn’t talked to her for real in months, nothing like their weekly hangover brunches in the Senate office. Then again, little is like the Senate office anymore, Tommy thinks as he ducks out into the stiff feeling hallway. 

The dress code, the food, the job. In the Senate days, they didn’t know Lovett, which is a point in the present’s favor. And- they didn’t know Dan. 

Tommy looks over his shoulder, unbidden, at Dan’s empty office, across the hall from Alyssa’s, dark and cold where hers is lit and warm and echoing noise from her phone call. 

Dan’s gotta be glad to be working on the campaign, in fact, he’s told them, multiple times, how much he’d missed it. But, Tommy sighs as he tiptoes around a corner, if Dan were here the interns would be less likely to be running in fear. He doesn’t let anyone shit on the interns. 

If Dan were here, Tommy’d have more reasons to come up here and see them both. More chances to enjoy the camaraderie he misses so terribly, since the White House became about work and not about a calling, a team. 

It’ll be better after the election, he hopes, and picks up his pace to track down the NSC finance director. 

***

Tommy walks in the door of the house and shrieks. 

“Whoa, just me,” Lovett rolls his eyes in the kitchen. “You have housemates, why are you freaking out about burglars before asking questions.” 

“They’re out tonight,” Tommy frowns, willing his racing heart to slow. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you,” Lovett shrugs. “Jon’s got some thing. Wanna beer?”

“You don’t live here anymore,” Tommy frowns at him. Tommy hadn’t even realized Lovett was in town. Lovett’s always in town these days, like if he and Jon don’t touch every few weeks they’ll both explode. Lovett’s never here though, in 1309. Tommy only sees him at Jon’s, when the guys drag him out of the office for a house party. 

“According to Cody, neither do you,” Lovett frowns right back. “He says you barely even sleep here. It’s after eleven p.m. Either you have some secret marriage or you’re becoming one with your shitty desk chair.” 

Tommy rolls his eyes and reaches for a beer. _His beer_, not Lovett’s to offer. “Cody’s a busybody.”

Lovett nods. “He is. He’s also not wrong.” He jumps up on the counter and kicks Tommy’s hip gently. “How’s it really going, Tommy?”

“Fine, amazing, best job I’ve ever had,” Tommy replies automatically. He can’t look at Lovett when he’s like this, trying to see into Tommy’s soul. 

There’s nothing to see in Tommy’s soul. Jon won’t stop talking about California. Cody won’t stop talking about the date Kristen finally agreed to go on. Even Alyssa leaves the office early on random weeknights for dates with David. 

Meanwhile Tommy sits in on meetings where he has nothing to say, learning about security crises he can do nothing about and then lies about them to the press. Meanwhile Tommy isn’t helping _do_ anything, for the country or himself. Meanwhile, Tommy just wants to come home to a _not_ empty house - one that isn’t filled by his old roommate trying to give him a heart attack just cause his boyfriend’s too busy to be fucked. Or to fuck him. Jon shares way too much information when he’s drunk. 

“I’m fine,” Tommy grits out, blinking back traitorous tears that come out of nowhere. 

“_Tommy_,” Lovett jumps off the counter and touches his shoulder. “You can talk to me, you know you can talk to me.” 

Tommy does know. Lovett’s never judged him, even when he was raking him over the coals for all the stupid things he grew up learning. Lovett’s wandered into the kitchen a dozen times when Tommy was up from insomnia or a nightmare and made them hot chocolate and let Tommy rant or cry or sit in silence. Lovett might be the only person who actually _wants_ to hear what’s going on in Tommy’s head.

“It is,” Tommy sighs. “It’s fine, I’m fine. Just…” he takes a shaky breath. “You know I haven’t had a second date in _years_? I haven’t even had a proper first date in months. When I get out of work early and go out with Mike, I meet people, give them my number sometimes, and then I never get the chance to see them again. I’m not even sure I want to see them again, but I never _can_. And you know I don’t care about hookups or whatever it’s just… I get lonely, sometimes,” he finishes lamely. 

“Tommy,” Lovett frowns, gripping him by the elbows. “I didn’t know you were feeling like that. We can- I’ll wingman for you anytime you want,” he promises. 

Tommy shakes his head. That’s not what he wants. He doesn’t want to hit on people at bars. He doesn’t want to do this dance of _should I call?_ and _will they understand if I have to cancel because of work?_ He wants more. He wants someone who knows what this life is like. He wants someone he can talk to about the news or about the stupidity of reporters and who he can tune out and watch a game with.

He wants to be _known_ again. Not like Katie knew him, knew all his worst parts and used them. He wants someone who knows what he’s thinking before he has to say it. He wants the way Jon knows when he hasn’t eaten lunch or Lovett knows when he needs to be pushed into a corner and made to admit what’s on his mind. Except _more_. 

“I want more than that,” Tommy tells Lovett softly. “I want… what you and Jon have, and I’m never gonna find something like that, so... “ he shakes his head. “It’s not that big a deal, I’m stressed by work shit and it just makes everything seem bigger than it is. I need a good sleep and some carbs, we should do brunch tomorrow.”

Lovett frowns at him. “Don’t do that. Don’t lock it up. No one's gonna know what you need if you don’t ask.” 

“I _am_ asking,” Tommy sighs. “I need you to feed me pancakes tomorrow morning, and laugh with me when Jon drowns his in more sugar than a kid on Halloween. I need you to keep asking me if I’m okay, cause I forget to ask myself. I need you to understand that I might be lonely - I am lonely, but there’s not a fix for it right now. Random alphas at bars aren’t any better than the alphas my parents keep trying to set me up with.”

Lovett laughs softly, pulling Tommy into a hug suddenly. 

“What?” Tommy blinks, confused. 

“I’m so proud of you?” Lovett laughs helplessly. “The Tommy I met four years ago wouldn’t have said any of that. And you wouldn’t even _consider_ going out to bars to meet random alphas, remember?”

Tommy snorts. “Mostly thanks to you.” 

“Happy to be of service,” Lovett smirks and lets him go to bow theatrically. He sighs and gets serious again. “Have you ever thought that maybe, if the job’s holding you back from living life, it isn’t your life that ought to make way?”

Tommy nods a little, heart twisting with the echoes of Jon’s _come with me_ and the flashes of all the post-White House vacation instagram pictures. “I’m starting to think so, yeah.” 

Lovett smiles at him. “Any way I can help,” he promises. 

“You and Jon will be the first to know,” Tommy nods. 

***

“What’s got into you?” Tommy looks up from his desk. 

Jon just got back from a full week of vacation in California, the blessing of post-re-elect holidays, and he walks into Tommy’s office _literally_ humming under his breath. He’s glowing, tan and smiling Lovett’s smile. His skin is shining as bright as his smile and he smells…

“_Jon_,” Tommy’s eyes go wide. “Did-” 

Jon swings Tommy’s door shut and grins even wider, which Tommy didn’t think was possible. “Did we bond this week? Why yes Tommy, we did.”

“I didn’t know that was even-” Tommy starts.

“Possible? Neither did I!” Jon glows at him. It shouldn’t be possible. Betas usually can’t form a bond at all. He’s never heard about omegas and betas, Tommy realizes, but he’d always assumed. “I really didn’t think it could ever happen, yknow?” 

Jon slides into Tommy’s visitor chair, eyes going soft and open. 

“Kinda thought you were giving up the chance to bond,” Tommy says softly. “It was romantic, actually.” 

He _had_ thought about that. Bonding- he’s dreamed about it his whole life. Becoming one with your partner, knowing them wholly in a way you’ll never be connected to anyone else. Not bonding had been the nail in the coffin of his and Katie’s dying relationship. Of course, plenty of couples don’t - but Jon’s a romantic at heart, he’d wanted it as badly as Tommy does. He’d just wanted Lovett more. 

“Yeah, that’s what Lovett said,” Jon flushes. “But you know, I’m starting to wean off suppressants to leave work, cause I’ll be able to take a few days now and it’s supposed to be healthier. And I guess I had a mini heat and we… y’know… and it just _happened_,” his face lights up again. “I’m so _happy_, Tommy. It makes waiting to move even more unbearable.”

Tommy laughs, “cause you were so patient before.” 

Jon ducks his head. 

“I’m really happy for you Jon,” Tommy promises, tapping his ankle under the desk. He is happy. He’s also certain, suddenly, of the plan he’s been turning around all week. “And… I’ve been thinking.”

Jon looks up. “About-?” he asks, his face lighting up in a totally different way. Tommy’s heart thuds. How could he not?

“I think I want to,” Tommy says carefully. “I want to give my notice and leave and start a new path, together. I’ll stay in DC, at least for a while, and we can have a bicoastal consulting firm.”

Jon grins and pushes up, tripping over Tommy’s desk in his haste to wrap him in a hug. “Thank _god, _Tom.”

“Maybe we can dig that script we used to fuck around wth out?” Tommy offers. “I have some thoughts on how to upend the, ah, character arc.” 

Jon grins so wide. “I can’t wait.”

***

Jon and Tommy leave the White House, together, on March first. 

Tommy turns his cell phone off and goes on a European river cruise for two weeks. Lovett had sent him the _cool, young people’s cruise line_, mostly as a joke, but Tommy couldn’t shake the carefree promotional images on the great landmarks of the Rhine and the Danube.

Tommy feels like the oldest person on the whole boat, which can’t be true but nips Lovett’s teasing _make sure you go to Singles’ Night_ in the bud. All the same, it’s the perfect trip. He gets higher than he’s ever been in his life in Amsterdam - no SF-86 looming, no parents or Katie to cluck disapprovingly. 

He finds a friendly couple of twenty-somethings for a daylong brewery tour in Miltenberg and discovers that he’s no longer a twenty-something when he has to get on a bicycle tour in Wurzberg the next morning with a pounding headache.

He cries in Nuremburg. He understands, for the first time, the obsession with sports cars beyond as a status symbol when he tours the BMW factory in Regensburg. He takes the train to Berlin at the end, hits four museums and a beer garden in one day, and checks into the nicest hotel he’s ever stayed in. 

A three hundred dollar room service bill and four hour massage later, Tommy heads to the airport and turns his phone back on. 

He posts a single picture to Twitter. It’s one he took from a kayak trip down the Pegnitz River - babbling river spreading before him, endless blue sky above. He captions it _could get used to this life_ and means it. 

***

DC is boring without Jon and Lovett and work.

Fenway is taking off and they’re making money and Tommy feels a little empty, but mostly still relieved. He goes on a bunch of dates with people he doesn’t really like. He gets back into running, eats healthier, sleeps enough. 

That still leaves him with a lot of free time to fuck around on his phone. He really needs a dog. 

He’s sitting at home, doing exactly that, when his screen lights up with an incoming call from Alyssa. 

“Hey Lys, what’s up?” 

“I need a favor,” Alyssa says, a little frantic. “I have to go on that foreign trip and everyone’s busy dealing with Syria and the floods in Colorado and Dan's threatening to come into the office while we're gone. I know it's a lot to ask, but, can you please go to his hospital room and make him stay there?” 

“Yeah of course,” Tommy says immediately. He’s only heard the grapevine version of the _heart attack, aneurysm, brain cancer_ that landed Dan in the hospital last week, but it sounds pretty serious.

“Thanks,” Alyssa sighs exhaustedly and gives him the room number. “Fucking morons not understanding the importance of _health_. Let me know if you need me to call and scream.”

“Will do,” Tommy laughs. “I got this, have a good trip.” 

He’s not so sure he’s got this when he pokes his head into Dan’s hospital room two hours later. 

Dan’s sitting on the edge of the bed, a shirt pulled clumsily on around a hospital gown, looking for all the world like someone who’s about to check himself out AMA and actually kill himself this time. 

“Hey,” Tommy announces himself. “Alyssa said you could use some company.”

Dan glares at him, the look that’s quelled interns and reporters and at least one chief of staff. Tommy doesn’t flinch. “She said I need a _babysitter_,” Dan mutters. 

Tommy shrugs a little and invites himself inside, glancing pointedly at the oxfords on the floor next to the bed. “Kinda looks like you need one, you’re on medical leave.” 

“There is important work to get done,” Dan bites back. 

“_You’re_ important,” Tommy stares at him. 

Dan’s eyes, their normal crystal blue a little dulled by fever or pain medication, flash with anger, then… confusion?, before hardening again. “Tommy, I’m fine.” 

“Really?” Tommy settles into the visitor chair and blinks at him. “Because according to the rumor mill you had a stroke, stage 4 cancer, and open heart surgery, so I’m not sure you should be alive, let alone leaving this bed.”

Dan shakes his head against a laugh. “I’m very alive,” he sighs, sitting back a little and looking at Tommy for real. “I had stroke-like symptoms, I’ve got some kind of hypertension, and I’m gonna have to take drugs and change my diet and avoid ‘extreme stress’.” He does actual air quotes around stress, it’s adorable. “I think the doctors are unrealistic, but they tell me I don’t have a medical degree.”

Tommy snorts, “fools,” and leans back in his chair. “It can’t hurt to listen to them for a few days, you’re really not irreplaceable, dude.” 

Dan clutches his heart. “You wound me.” 

“Can recommend early retirement as a way to cut back the stress though,” Tommy smirks a little. “I have nothing to worry about except which daytime soap I’ve gotten too comfortable with the plot of.” 

“Sounds miserable,” Dan raises his eyebrows. 

“Well,” Tommy admits, “DC kinda sucks when you quit politics.”

“Are you trying to sell me?” Dan smiles wryly. 

Tommy shrugs. “I’m thinking of following the herd to California. I’ll let you know if it’s a better sell.” 

“I think that will be good for you,” Dan smiles for real. “LA with the lovebirds?” 

“God no,” Tommy laughs. “I’m giving them a five year cooling off period. I’m thinking San Francisco. Lots of consulting clients, good food, better climate.” 

“Sounds nice,” Dan smiles. “Maybe at 65.” 

Tommy rolls his eyes, “you’re ridiculous.”

“I’m also not leaving?” Dan looks at his shoes longingly. 

“Alyssa told me to sit on you if I had to,” Tommy reports, chipper enough to hopefully hide the electric charge running through him at the thought. 

“That woman,” Dan sighs. “If she hadn’t just saved my life, I’d hate her.”

“I brought cards?” Tommy holds them up. “Poker or blackjack?”

“Poker,” Dan sighs. “At least you’re the fun kind of babysitter.” 

They play cards and trade gossip until the night nurse comes in and Tommy looks at his watch to find that it’s nine p.m.

“Ahh, guess you’re stuck here for the night,” he grins at Dan. “I can bring Scrabble tomorrow.” 

Dan shakes his head a little, already looking loopy with a new dose of meds. “Why are you doing this Tommy? You could have told Alyssa no.” 

“You're my friend,” Tommy says easily. “And I want to make sure you're okay.” 

Dan’s face does something funny at that, but he doesn’t respond, eyes drooping a little. 

“Night Dan,” Tommy smiles, and heads for the door. “Get some rest and get better, we need you.”


	4. Chapter 4

_San Francisco, 2015_

“Welcome to San Francisco,” Tommy grins as Dan sits down across from him at the corner burrito joint.

“So far, San Francisco is fog, overpriced apartments, and hills that are gonna give me a heart attack, but thanks,” Dan sighs. “Some guy I know highly recommended the place and I gotta say, I’m questioning his judgment.” 

Tommy snorts. He _has_ become a bit of a SF evangelist in their group chats - more to counteract Lovett’s blatant SoCal propaganda than anything else, but… 

“It’s a good city,” he shrugs. “It’s ever-changing and it’s so _open_.” 

Tommy’s met more, _different_ people in the year he’s lived here than he ever has outside the campaign trail. Maybe it’s the freedom he feels, half a world away from DC. Maybe it’s the liberal cultures that are visible on the streets and in the coffee shops he works out of, totally unlike any world he’s ever known. Maybe it’s Tommy himself who’s different. 

Either way, he was more excited than he’ll ever admit when Dan finally got coaxed out of the West Wing and announced he was moving out here. It’s more than his ill-advised crush on his former boss; Tommy’s missed Dan’s presence at sports bars and parties, wanted to bring him to restaurants like this one and see his pleased face as he samples the salsa. 

“Okay,” Dan laughs, “this salsa is a selling point.” 

“There’s a lot more to love,” Tommy promises. “I’ll take you on a tour any time you want.”

“Might take you up on that,” Dan smiles a little. “It’s a little weird to not be surrounded by people who recognize me from Politico.” 

“You’ll learn to love it,” Tommy promises. “Waking up for East Coast news, not so much.”

“Holding you to that,” Dan nods. “Now tell me what to order.”

***

“They weren’t so bad,” Tommy says, as the door of the sports bar swings shut on Dan’s work happy hour. “I mean, I don’t object to the free beer, but I’m not sure why you were so desperate for company, they seem pretty progressive.” 

He’s been hanging out with Dan more and more in the past two months, since Dan moved to the West Coast. Tommy might even call them real friends. He’d still been surprised when Dan asked him to come along tonight. Meeting Dan’s colleagues, even colleagues that Dan bitches about all the time, felt like a big thing. 

Dan shakes his head, walking backwards in front of Tommy up the street, checking their surroundings out of the corner of his eye. “They’re all fucking talk, I can’t stand them.” 

“Chad seemed alright,” Tommy frowns. “I don’t know much about hockey, but I certainly didn’t know that Phoenix was playing an alpha defenseman.” 

Dan’s eyes darken and Tommy’s frown deepens. “What?” 

“It’s such fake bullshit,” Dan growls a little. “All they let him do is check and the refs penalize him so harshly, and ‘woke’ people like Chad and Tyler think it’s so goddamned ‘groundbreaking’ and ‘revolutionary.’”

“Oh,” Tommy says softly, taken aback. Dan must be really mad about this, he doesn’t ever let Tommy see his real emotions so easily. 

If he thinks about it, he can see how the hockey thing lines up with all Lovett’s rants about tokenism - including the alpha player in a team sport and breaking one norm for the press, but having him play the most stereotypical, violent position and penalizing him for it. 

“And did you hear Tyler?” Dan continues, the fire building behind his eyes. “‘The Coyotes are barely a hockey team anyway, playing in the damn desert’? God forbid that the team that’s making an _attempt_ to move forward be a team deserving of any respect. It’s the same old prejudice that kept me from-” 

“From what, Dan?” Tommy presses, a little nervous. Dan’s never talked to him about growing up as an alpha. Tommy’s been afraid to ask for years: how Dan became _himself_. 

Dan bites his lip, the burned out fire in his eyes mingling with the glassiness of alcohol and the world-weariness that he wears like a cloak. “I, ah, always wanted to play basketball. They wouldn’t let me play in Brazil but my parents found a hoop for our driveway in Japan. My high school let me on the team after my dad threatened the principal up and down, but they mostly kept me on the bench unless they wanted _aggressive guarding_.” 

“That’s bullshit,” Tommy frowns. “I’ve seen you play with POTUS, you’re a great shot.” 

Dan shrugs a little, the fight sinking out of him. “It’s what it is. Wish we’d moved further forward. Anyway, you were telling me about the pitch you and Jon got yesterday?”

“I was,” Tommy frowns at the blatant subject change but decides he’d better not press more on the first _real_ childhood story Dan’s ever told him. “Honestly, I know we’ve worked miracles in public relations, but some people have _no idea_ what a realistic publicity plan looks like…” 

***

Tommy’s phone pings as they’re finishing dinner. “Oh shit,” he digs in his wallet “I forgot to pick up my refill, fuck.” 

“Do you need to go get it?” Dan shifts in his seat. “I can get the check.” 

Tommy shakes his head. “nah, it’s fine. I’ll just stop at CVS on the way home.” 

This is the second time in as many months that he’s forgotten to pick up his suppressant refill. It’s not like it’s even hard, he can go to any pharmacy and get it with his health insurance card. It’s like his brain is rebelling against taking it or something, listening to Jon’s hormone-free evangelism too intently. 

“Right,” Dan sighs. “I forget how-” he cuts himself off. 

“How what?” Tommy frowns. 

“How easy it is for you,” Dan shrugs. “I have to make an appointment at my doctor’s office for mine and pay an arm and a leg. Would be nice to be able to stop at a 24 hour CVS.”

“Right,” Tommy sighs.

He remembers this fight from the ACA, the provision requiring equal coverage for alphas being stripped in one of the last brutal floor fights - thanks to fucking Joe Manchin. He remembers Dan’s face too, his eyes drawn to it across the bullpen even then. Dan’s eyes deflating and going hollow even as he shrugged and lied obviously _it’s worth it if this passes_. 

“It really sucks that they can’t mass produce it as easily,” Tommy offers helplessly. Most alphas can’t even get suppressants, Dan’s one of the lucky ones, able to afford it and able to get the prescription from the kind of doctor who only exists in major cities. 

Dan leans forward a little, eyes lighting up with the shine of passion and the whiskey he’s been drinking all night. “God, Tommy, that’s so _stupid_,” he says. Somehow it doesn’t sound like a rebuke from his mouth.

Tommy frowns a little anyway. “Why?” Dan shakes his head, eyes shuttering a little, and Tommy presses at the opening. “I want to know Dan, tell me.” 

Dan sighs a little and takes another sip of his drink reflectively, the seconds ticking by like they’re hung in suspended animation. 

“Okay,” he nods, like he’s convinced himself of something. “The entire healthcare industry has been perpetuating stereotypes and lies about alpha biology for _decades_ and people have fucking died because of it.” 

Tommy swallows hard and wishes he was surprised. 

Dan’s looking at him intently, a little of the fire back in his eyes. His gaze is challenging, like he expects Tommy to argue, to walk away, to change the subject. Tommy feels like a moth drawn to the flame. 

“Tell me,” Tommy says simply, opening his hands on the table in front of them. “Apparently I don’t know shit.” 

“It actually wouldn’t be any more expensive to make suppressants for alphas,” Dan starts, the words tripping out of his mouth now that Tommy’s given the invitation. “If we ever funded some fucking research into making the drugs _work_. The only reason that any options exist at all is the research of _one_ scientist in the eighties. Dr. Frederick Elborn.” 

Dan’s mouth curls around the doctor’s name like it does when he talks about Obama or Charles Barkley. Like he’s a hero.

“What did Dr. Elborn do?” Tommy asks. 

“Single-handedly created a suppressant,” Dan smiles. “He was brilliant, obviously, and his only child, his son, was an alpha. And little Freddie wanted to be a scientist like his dad, but couldn’t pass a science class cause he had to miss so many days for his ruts,” his mouth twists bitterly. “Dr. Elborn had a lab at Stanford and worked for like four years straight until he found something that seemed viable,” Dan pauses to sigh softly. “He had to test it for the first time on Freddie cause no one else would volunteer.” 

Tommy sucks in a breath. “Was he okay?” He’s not sure how this scientist can be Dan’s hero if he killed his kid. 

“Mostly,” Dan frowns. “It’s just a terrible period of the research. The first drug he tried worked. It stopped the rut completely, but there were really bad side effects cause it blocked all kinds of other hormones. Freddie ended up refusing to take them and joining the Navy and not speaking to Dr. Elborn for years. But the drug was already on the black market and so the State of California started slipping him money to make it better.” 

“Fuck,” Tommy bites his lip. “But- the suppressants don’t ah… totally block it.” 

Dan shakes his head. “The grad students working with Dr. Elborn, some of whom were alphas themselves, managed to figure out how to reduce the side effects, but that reduced the effectiveness in turn.” He laughs darkly, “still cause the worst fucking migraines. The first functional version hit the national market in ‘92 and it hasn’t gotten all that much better since.” 

Tommy swallows hard. He started taking suppressants when he was fourteen and switched brands at seventeen because his doctor said it was messing up his iron count. He’s taken pills and had shots and even contemplated implants; never worrying about it as much as he worries about his allergy medication. He can’t imagine life without the suppressants; he had three heats before going on them and hasn’t had to worry since. 

“That sucks Dan,” Tommy says honestly. “Maybe… we are moving forward, right? Someone’s gotta fund some research soon.” 

“Maybe,” Dan shrugs. “I’m not holding my breath.” 

He looks old, suddenly, and tired, and Tommy remembers with a crash of clarity that Dan is four years older than him. _‘92_. 

“Dan,” Tommy asks cautiously. “If they didn’t become available til the nineties… did you?”

Dan takes a deep breath. “I didn’t get them til college. My parents couldn’t afford them right away, and no one thought they were really gonna work at first anyway. I saved every penny I made my senior year in high school and the summer before college and found a doctor who’d prescribe me a round.” He smiles, his whole face lifting with it. “The first rut I didn’t have to miss a week of class for, god, Tommy, you can’t imagine how good it felt.” 

“I can’t,” Tommy says honestly. “I’m sorry. I never knew.” 

He feels like he’s hit in the chest weekly, daily even, by how much he never knew. Tommy thought, when he moved out here, that Lovett had taught him everything there was to know about how inaccurate the stereotypes about alphas and omegas are, but the falsehoods he’s learned his whole life seem to be bottomless. 

“It’s okay,” Dan shakes his head. “Very few people do. I have a book about it if you want to borrow it,” he shrugs archly. “But, suffice it to say I’d give a lot to be able to run to CVS for a refill. God forbid I miss a pill; you were in Egypt.” 

Tommy shudders a little at the memory of the cordoned off hallway. “That sucked.”

“Something something, turns out I was bad at taking care of myself in the old job,” Dan shrugs easily. “I’m getting better though,” he gestures at the remnants of his salad. 

Tommy laughs fondly. “All of us are better without that stress. I will borrow that book, if you don’t mind. I’d like to learn more.” 

“Sure,” Dan nods, looking a little surprised. “I’ll bring it when we watch the game on Saturday.”

***

“Look,” Lovett waves his burrito, dropping salsa and beans onto his plate. “All I’m saying is that Hollywood is a goddamned scam and I regret ever letting anyone convince me that screenwriting was a talent I had.”

“Fuck off,” Dan snorts. He affects a slightly higher pitched voice, imitating Lovett. “I got this development deal, they’re literally paying me to sit and think of ideas.”

“I don’t _have_ any ideas!” Lovett yelps, throwing a chip at Dan. “Jon’s not any fucking use either, he’s managing like 200 words a month for the fucking _Daily Beast_.”

“Writers’ block is the worst,” Jon agrees placidly. “I’m thinking about abandoning it for a new medium.” 

“What?” Tommy blinks between them. “TV? You hate cable.”

“Cable’s the worst,” Jon and Dan say in unison, both badly hiding smirks. 

Lovett rolls his eyes, “they’re leaving us for greener pastures Tommy.” 

“Oh my god, I told you we’d have you on,” Jon sighs as Tommy glares at them all.

“_Someone tell me what we’re talking about._”

“Tommy hates being left out too,” Lovett elbows Jon. 

Jon shakes his head fondly, giving Lovett his _you monster_ smile. Tommy gives them another glare and turns to Dan. 

Dan laughs and takes pity on him, thank god. “Bill Simmons, at the Ringer, asked Jon and I to do a podcast for him during the primary season. ‘A sane conversation about politics.’” 

Dan’s glowing with the quiet joy he gets when he’s praised for his talents. Like he can’t believe anyone notices how fucking _smart_ he is. Like he can’t believe anyone would listen to what he has to say. Tommy wants to strangle every person who ever made him feel otherwise. 

“That’s great,” Tommy grins at him. “You’re gonna give the audience the best information they’ve ever heard.”

Dan flushes a little and ducks his head. “I hope so.” 

“We don’t know shit about podcasting,” Jon shrugs, “but we’ve been promised we just need to talk to each other. Apparently people are gonna listen.”

“Apparently,” Lovett scoffs. “You’d have better luck if they could look at you, but I think your voice is still gonna be a draw.” 

“Not mine so much,” Dan shrugs. “Bill’s taking a pretty big chance putting the two of us on air. People still don’t really want to see unbonded alphas and omegas together.” 

Lovett scoffs. “Shut up. You can’t give into that attitude.” 

“I wouldn’t do it without you,” Jon says more gently. “I think the audience will value you as much as we do, if we can get one.”

“They will,” Tommy agrees. Dan turns his shy smile on Tommy and Tommy has to look away before his own face gives away everything he’s thinking. _You’re the smartest person I know. I’d listen to you tell me about marginal tax rates or the numbering system of the phonebook._ “It’ll be neat if this takes off, we’ll finally know famous people.” 

“Hey,” Lovett squawks just like Tommy expected him to. “1600 Penn is a-” 

“Cult classic,” Tommy, Jon, and Dan all interrupt in unison. 

“One perfect season,” Lovett glares. 

Jon leans over to kiss Lovett’s temple. “We know babe.” He strokes Lovett’s shoulder as he looks at Tommy. “If it goes well, I wanna get you on. Both of you.”

“I’m done with the press,” Tommy laughs. 

“We’re not press,” Dan grins at him. “We’re your friends, who you want to see succeed.” 

Tommy shakes his head, feeling his heart swell at Dan’s smile and tone and words. He’s never sure, if Dan puts up with him cause he’s the best option he’s got, except for these weekends when Jon and Lovett are in town. If Dan knows how _bored_ and lost and worse off Tommy would be without his friendship. 

“Maybe for you.”

***

“Can I ask you something?” Tommy pulls his knee up on the worn couch to face Dan.

They’re on the roof of Tommy’s building, ostensibly celebrating the download numbers on Tommy and Lovett’s first guest appearance on Keepin’ it 1600. 

Tommy forgot about the podcast two glasses of whiskey ago. Numbers lost in the glow of Dan’s eyes in the reflection of the firepit. Talking points disintegrated by the heat he imagines he can feel from Dan’s body, less than six inches away on the well-used outdoor furniture. Microphones and sound levels fading with the thrumming of his heart, beating steady and loud _do it you know you want to_, coaxing him to make a leap he’d regret. Coaxing him to test the safety net that’s almost certainly not there. 

He pulls his treacherous heart back from the edge as Dan looks up, “Hm?” 

“How’d you-” _become everything you are_. Tommy searches for words. “I’ve been reading the book you lent me. And the chapter about the college integration process, in fucking eighty-three. How-” he shakes his head. “How’d you make it here?”

Dan flinches back. “Tommy.” 

Tommy shakes his head, stopping himself from reaching out, from frightening Dan more. Cause Dan looks frightened, like Tommy’s broken some silent wall, like _Tommy_ is threatening. 

“No Dan,” Tommy’s voice cracks a little and he coughs around the burn in his throat from the whickey. “I meant that as a compliment. You’re fucking incredible.” 

“South Dakota,” Dan says suddenly. 

“Huh?” Tommy blinks at the non-sequitur. 

Dan reaches forward and refills his glass, overfilling the line created by the fancy whiskey rocks Tommy’s stepmom gave him for Christmas. Dan lifts the glass and drains it in a smooth motion, throat moving in long lines. 

He stares into the fire for a long moment before he speaks again. 

“South Dakota was the worst. I was-” Dan shakes his head. “Twenty-five and thought I finally figured it out. I had the Georgetown degree and the White House internship on my resume. I had suppressants figured out. I had a real job on a campaign. I rented an apartment - thought the extra papers were cause I had no credit but…”

“But?” Tommy prompts softly. 

He can see the years unspooling in front of them. Dan, younger, skinnier, hair full and dark. Dressed in new suits that were fit for someone with more life to fill them instead of comfy jeans and hoodies. The lines in his face gentler, less populated, but likely still present - scars of all the battles he’d already won. 

“You know what alphas do in South Dakota?” Dan sighs bitterly. “Farming and waste management. Heard four or five people a day - more when I canvassed - asking me who the fuck I thought I was. All these groups of alphas in the dive below my shitty, drywall apartment, _you think you’re better than us? Let’s see how _smart_ you are city boy._” 

“Fuck,” Tommy breathes. He knows Dan’s had to deal with so much, but he’d have quit in a week. 

Dan twists his fingers together. “And then after all of that. After months of gritting my teeth and bearing it, we fucking _lost_.” He sounds young and vulnerable as he adds in a whisper, “if Obama hadn’t taken a chance on me…” 

“He’s always been the smartest,” Tommy agrees softly, chancing the tiniest brush of his knee against Dan’s. 

It feels like electricity shooting through him. 

“He has,” Dan smiles softly. “He knew you were something special when you were driving a van too.” 

Tommy shakes his head. “Not the same.” 

“No,” Dan shrugs. “But your parents couldn’t have loved it when you turned down the presidential for a state senator in Illinois.” 

“Fuck no,” Tommy laughs, thinking about the screaming match with his dad. “At the time it seemed like I might be making the worst mistake of my life. He kept threatening to cut me off, and Katie wouldn’t look at me for the whole week before I moved to Chicago. But,” Tommy lifts his glass a little, to the twenty-four year old who had no clue what he was doing but followed his instincts, “It got me everything else I have.”

Dan looks up, finally, and smiles shy and small. “I’m pretty glad you stood your ground.”

“Me too,” Tommy grins back at him, refusing to look away even though he knows his eyes might be giving too much away. “The guy I was before that was mostly useless. Only good decision he ever made.”

Dan laughs and reaches for the bottle again, refilling both their glasses this time. “Only one that mattered.”

Tommy slides his fingers around the glass as Dan passes it over. Dan lifts his cup in the air and Tommy clinks their glasses with a giggle. “To Obama changing our lives.” 

“Obama,” Dan grins, “and us.”

***

“Okay, so tell me about this terrible meeting,” Tommy prompts after he finishes his pasta. 

Dan had come over in a terrible mood, muttering a terse _work sucked today_ before throwing himself into critiquing Tommy’s cooking with patently false enthusiasm. Tommy let it slide, partly cause he could tell Dan wasn’t ready to talk and more so because he needed all of his focus to be on his vodka sauce. 

But now he’s pleasantly full of a dinner that was actually _good_ not just edible and half of a bottle of wine and Dan is still frowning a little between bites. 

“It wasn’t that big of a thing to tell,” Dan sighs. “I just don’t understand how I can still hate this job _so much_. It should be getting better.”

“What do you mean?” Tommy frowns. Dan does bitch about work a lot, even though he claims he likes what he’s doing, likes helping people help other people.

“They didn’t want me when they hired me,” Dan frowns. “But it should be getting _better_. I should be proving myself.”

“Dan,” Tommy stares at him. “You’re _overqualified_ for this job. How could they not want you?”

“Exactly,” Dan points at him. “They looked at my resume and they felt like they couldn’t turn me down. And couldn’t miss the press releases for the hire. But they definitely don’t want me. I’m not- fuck, I _know_ what I’m doing and I feel like everyone is looking over my shoulder all the time waiting for me to fuck up. The whole of goddamned Silicon Valley - ‘we’re so open and nondiscriminatory’ but god forbid you want to work in a place that doesn’t make you feel exactly as _less than_ as fucking high school.” He sighs heavily, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “After the meeting today, my boss told me that he’d thought about giving me this conference, to go and schmooze new investors, but thought it _wouldn’t suit my temperament_.”

Tommy’s blood boils. “Dan, you should report that to HR.”

“Not gonna do anything,” Dan sighs, defeated. “He’ll just come up with some neutral reason and they’ll sweep it under the rug.”

Not for the first time, Tommy curses the filibuster that kept them from getting the anti-discrimination bill through the Senate. It didn’t go far enough, he knows now, but maybe it would have _helped_.

“You should just come work with me and Jon,” Tommy offers, as light as he can manage to offer something they’ve been talking about for weeks. Fenway is floundering, because of its founders or their business plan, he’s not sure. He knows they could use Dan’s vision though. “We wouldn't let shit like that fly."

Dan laughs in his face, suddenly cold and bitter. 

“What?” Tommy blinks. 

“Nothing,” Dan mutters, voice tense and quiet. 

Tommy doesn’t know what he did wrong. “I didn’t mean to offend you,” he tries to joke. “I know we’re kind of disasters, you deserve better than our business.”

Dan shakes his head, every line of his body taut and tense. Tommy hates it. Hates the sharp angles of Dan’s body, closed off and defensive, making himself _small_ when he’s the largest presence in Tommy’s world. Hates the disheartened slump of Dan’s shoulders, believing all the bullshit the world has tried to break him with. Hates the soft, pained sound of his breath, like… he’s trying not to cry?

“Dan, please,” Tommy pleads. “Tell me.”

Dan finally looks up. "Tommy, you were exactly like that."

“_Dan_,” Tommy says, stunned at the ice in Dan’s eyes.

Dan doesn’t even flinch, like Tommy’s flipped a switch or broken the straw holding him back.

“The campaign communications director is a fucking _prim_?” Dan says, soft and smooth and deadly. 

Tommy freezes. 

“You didn’t even _know_ me,” Dan says, pained. “But you knew I was on the other side of the door. You didn’t _care_ if I heard, so goddamned eager to make your point to Jon. To say that I couldn’t do the job, that you didn’t want to work with me.” 

The drab, cold Chicago hallway comes rushing back in a sickening blur. Tommy can see Jon’s face, admonishing _don’t say that_, horrified in a way that the privileged, stupid, prejudiced, 2008 version of himself had refused to see. Had been unable to see. 

“You avoided me for months,” Dan continues, torturously. “You didn’t want to be alone with me. You jumped if I came too close. And even worse, you went out of your way to exclude me from anything outside of work. Jon dragged me to some happy hour with you all and you wasted no time complaining about _creepy alphas watching you from the bar_.”

Tommy shivers. That, he doesn’t remember. Probably because it happened more than once, giggling with Mike or Jon or even Katie. Putting his bullshit on some stranger, not pausing to think about them as a person. 

“Jon and Alyssa were my friends, and they _loved you_ and I was excited to meet you,” Dan says. “They talked about you nonstop while you were in Iowa and I thought, I thought then that we’d get along, be friends maybe. And when you showed up and you hated me on sight - do you know how much that made me reevaluate _everything_ they’d ever said? Like, does Jon think I can_ only see things in black and white_ too and is just better at hiding it? Is Alyssa just being polite when she compliments my work and praying I don’t _mess it up for everyone_.” 

He’s quoting Tommy again, Tommy can tell. Tommy doesn’t remember saying those things, those laughably, hideously untrue things, but even if he didn’t trust Dan’s nearly photographic memory above most things in this world, he’d believe he said them. 

“_I’m_-” Tommy manages, strangled. He’s not even sure what he’s trying to say. _I’m not like that anymore? I’m sorry? I didn’t know? I’m such an idiot?_

“Look,” Dan sighs, reining himself back in, sliding the cool dispassionate, learned mask back on. Tommy almost misses the ice. “I know you've like, grown a lot, or you've just gotten better at pretending to be progressive, I dunno, but don't fucking pretend you don't know how terrible people can be.” 

“Dan,” Tommy tries, voice croaky. 

Dan shakes his head and pushes up from the table. “I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go,” he says curtly, and flees. 

Tommy sits at his table, surrounded by dirty dishes and his filthy soul. He looks at the wine glasses, side by side, like some parody of the friendship he thought he’d built, the sparkle he thought he’d seen in Dan’s eyes a few times. 

Dan isn’t his friend. Dan doesn’t want him. Dan maybe hates him. Worst of all, he _should_. 

Tommy stares at the wine glasses as the lights of the city go dark out the window, as the clock over the microwave ticks past midnight, as the night grows as black and muggy as his soul feels. 

Finally, when his eyes start to ache and the sun is starting to force its way into the sky, Tommy picks up his phone and swipes through three pages of apps to find the one he wants, opening it with languid, heavy fingers to type _LAX_. 

***

“Leo, come _on_,” Tommy huffs, pushing his head away for the third time. 

“Okay, fuck this,” Lovett says sharply. Tommy looks up in surprise at his tone. “You’ve been sulking on our couch for three days. You can be nasty to Jon and to the producers and to all our waiters and delivery people. You can even be rude to me a couple times, you’re going through some shit, I get it. But you can’t be an ass to our dog.” 

“Lovett,” Tommy sighs. It’s hard to defend against Lovett’s completely accurate assessment. 

“I’m taking Leo on a walk,” Lovett bulldozes past him. “Get your head on straight, or go home, I don’t really care.” He pauses to kiss Jon’s cheek and mutter, not quietly, “see if you can knock some sense into him?”

Tommy stares at his feet while Lovett’s footsteps pound away. He stares at his feet while the door slams and Jon sighs quietly. He stares at his feet while Jon gingerly sits down on the other side of the couch from Tommy’s makeshift nest. He keeps staring at his feet as Jon sighs again and ventures softly, “we don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” and as the _but Lovett’s right_ hangs in the air. 

Lovett is right. Tommy’s been a jerk to him and to Jon and to everyone in the Ringer studio yesterday. Tommy’s been a jerk for a really long time. Tommy’s so fucking sick of himself. 

Most of all though, he’s tired of being sick of himself. 

_You were exactly like that_, Dan said. At least he used the past tense, is all Tommy has been able to cling to the past few days. The past tense means that Tommy might not be irredeemable. The past tense might mean that all the work he’s put in to learn more _matters_. But it means nothing if he keeps being a dick right now, in the present. 

Tommy looks up from his feet, slowly, and glances over at Jon. “I used to be a real asshole, didn’t I?” 

Jon pretends to think about it for a second, at least, before shrugging and saying gently, “at times, yeah. You’ve grown a lot.”

“Sure, whatever,” Tommy waves his hand. “But like, I was _really_ bad. Dan-” his voice catches, “he had this whole list stored up of all this _shit_ I said. Really _awful_ things Jon. How was I so blind?”

Jon sighs and scoots closer, reaching out to set a hand on Tommy’s knee. “You were really… uneducated. Mostly it wasn’t your fault I don’t think. I used to believe some of it, not the worst of it, but that alphas were aggressive and stupid. I was just lucky to have Professor Marsh teach me so much at Holy Cross. And,” he shrugs “I still didn’t know enough to avoid hurting Lovett really badly. The world’s taught us a bunch of bullshit Tommy.”

“I ate it all up though,” Tommy sighs. “I believed so much of it for so long. I- I can’t remember being that person anymore Jon.”

“That’s cause you’re not,” Jon says earnestly. “Tommy, hey,” he reaches for Tommy’s hands. Tommy can’t meet his eyes, sniffing a little against the pricks of tears. “You’re _not_ that person anymore. I know that. Lovett knows that, he’s so fucking proud of you, you know? _Dan_ knows that, I promise he does.”

Tommy shakes his head, choking a little as his traitorous eyes let the tears lose. “You know what I hate most about myself right now? That my first reaction, my very first thought, was annoyance, that everything I’ve done wasn’t good enough. Dan was being _so honest_ with me and I wanted him to keep his inconvenient truth in.”

“You know,” Jon bites his lip, “there was this stupid inspirational poster on Professor Marsh’s wall in his office, and I didn’t get it for a really long time, but now I do. It was on a picture of a dog with puppy dog eyes and it said ‘your first thought belongs to the world that made you; your second thought is who you are.’” He squeezes Tommy’s hands, hard. “What did you think second?”

“That I was absolutely horrible and I don’t know how I could ever make it up to him,” TOmmy says immediately. He takes a deep breath and looks up at Jon. “That I really care about Dan and I let him down, over and over again.” 

A wide smile splits Jon’s face. “There’s my best friend,” he grins. “You’re better than the stupid kid you were Tommy. You can apologize and move forward.” 

“_How_?” Tommy says helplessly. “I don’t know where to start.”

“I bet Lovett will have some ideas,” Jon shrugs. “There’ll be a posterboard, as long as you apologize to him for being a sulky brat.”

“I will,” Tommy says fervently. “I need to apologize to you too. You’re both better friends than I deserve.”

“We love you,” Jon grins and pulls him into a hug. “We’re always here to kick your ass in gear when you need it.”

***

_Knock, you coward_. 

Tommy’s been standing outside Dan’s apartment for ten minutes. The burritos in the bag clutched in his hand are probably cold, the notecards in his other hand are definitely ruined with crumpling and sweat, his heart feels like it’s beating out of his chest. 

_Look, burritos, chocolate, tequila, a sincere apology; it’s foolproof_, Lovett had promised when he and Jon dropped Tommy off at the airport with tight hugs and promises they don’t have standing to make. Tommy doesn’t know what he’s gonna do if Lovett’s wrong. 

He’s never gonna know if he doesn’t try, though, and the waiting is worse, finally, than knowing once and for all. He raises his shaking hand to knock before he can talk himself out of it, three quick taps. 

Tommy showered between the airport and here, put on a clean, pressed shirt. He’s pretty sure he still looks a fright, the new shirt sweat through, his hair wild around his ears, the bags under his eyes from the past few nights of tossing and turning. Yet, when Dan opens the door slowly, he smiles, just for an instant, like Tommy’s the best thing he’s ever seen. 

“Ahh, Tommy, hey,” Dan says slowly, replacing his wide smile with a carefully neutral one. 

“I need to apologize,” Tommy says, smoother than he expects his voice to be. “I brought burritos?”

Dan’s smiles widens again, just a bit, “Come in, please.” 

He hasn’t slammed the door. He’s inviting Tommy in. This has to be a good sign for the _not hating Tommy forever_ column. 

“Thanks,” Tommy says nervously, tripping a little over the threshold. He walks slowly into Dan’s apartment, like he doesn’t know it as well as his own, setting the bag carefully on the counter. 

“I’m, ah, sorry for snapping at you,” Dan says softly. Tommy’s heart stops and he turns to face Dan incredulously. _Dan’s_ sorry? “There’s, ah, SyFy is doing a marathon of old _Twilight Zone_ episodes, if you want to watch while we eat?”

“Dan,” Tommy frowns. 

“Or I’m sure there’s a hockey game or something on ESPN,” Dan adds hurriedly, his eyes darting away from Tommy’s face. 

“No, Dan, listen,” Tommy steps towards him a little. “Listen to me, _please_.” 

Dan glances back at him, “I’m listening.” 

Tommy nods in acknowledgment and pulls out his notecards. “I need to apologize, for everything. But I made a list of some of them.” 

“Tommy, you don’t- really, it’s okay,” Dan shakes his head. 

Tommy lifts a hand to stop him, and Dan, blessedly, listens. “I do need to apologize. I’m sorry for every time I said something terrible and offensive or stupid and uneducated. I remember some of them and I’m sure there are many more things I’ve said without even realizing it. I didn’t- I’m not that person anymore, Dan, and I’m so ashamed that I ever was.” 

“I know,” Dan says softly. “You’ve gotten so much better.” 

Tommy shakes his head a little and plunges on to his next bullet point. “I’m sorry for every time I disrespected you at work, whether I did so outright, or put in less effort, or just was rude in my head. I wasn’t used to having an alpha boss and it took me way too long to realize how insanely competent and brilliant you are, when I should have just trusted Obama’s judgment. Or not been such a prejudiced asshole in the first place. I’m sorry for any way that my disrespect made your job more difficult or less fulfilling. 

“And I’m sorry for making you feel unwelcome and for making you doubt your friends on the campaign. I didn’t know how to be friends with you, or if I even wanted to, but please believe me Dan, I never intended, even at my worst, to ostracize you or keep you from being at social events. I was always a little jealous, actually, of how much Jon and Alyssa and everyone loved you, until I got to know you and understood why.”

“Tommy,” Dan looks a little thunderstruck. Like… he’d expected Tommy to just keep going as usual, like he hasn’t had a million realizations this week. “It’s really okay.” 

“It’s not,” Tommy frowns. “It’s not okay at all. I was a complete asshole to you and I’m _so sorry Dan_. I know apologizing can’t make it okay, but I promise I’m gonna do better from now on. And I _do_ want you to hold me accountable for that. If you don’t mind, that is. I _want_ to know when I say something stupid or awful. Lovett and Jon and you calling me out; that’s been the best thing in the world for me. I’m such a better person for knowing you.” 

Dan shakes his head, a smile tugging at his lips. “I’ll always call you out,” he promises, stepping closer to bump Tommy’s shoulder gently as he reaches for the bag of food. “You have grown a lot, Tommy, I know that. I didn’t-” he sighs a little, “clearly I haven’t put the past entirely behind us, but as paradoxical as it might sound, telling you all that stuff that I’ve been holding in for years did help.” He makes a face, “that sounds bad, I still didn’t need to yell at you when you were trying to help, but getting it off my chest…” 

“I get it,” Tommy smiles at him. “I’m glad it’s in the open. And I’m glad you’ve given me so many chances I don’t deserve. I’m trying to be worthy of your friendship.”

“You are,” Dan promises, handing him a burrito. “You want to grab us beers out of the fridge? I’m starving.” 

“Yeah,” Tommy nods, crossing the kitchen. “_Twilight Zone_ sounds great, if I can crash?” 

“Anytime,” Dan says sincerely. 

***

“Finally!” Lovett cheers as Dan appears in the door of the patio. Tommy shakes his head as everyone else at the restaurant turns their heads. Dan flushes and weaves through quickly, pulling out the chair next to Tommy and dropping into it with a huff. “We thought we were gonna have to have you call into the live show and that would look stupid.”

“The damn cab got lost four times,” Dan sighs. “Shouldn’t driving from LAX into West Hollywood be a, I don’t know, not-unheard of route?” 

“It’s LAX,” Jon sighs, “it’s fucking cursed. We made Lovett leave you some calamari.”

“Got you a mojito too,” Tommy pushes it towards him. “They’re really good here. It’s cranberry, but mine’s lavender if you wanna try it.” 

“Thanks,” Dan glances at him as he takes a sip. “I, ah, listened to Monday’s pod on the plane.” 

Tommy shivers a little and looks down at his plate. Dan had to work this week on some big presentation that kept him in San Francisco until now, hours before the live show they’ve miraculously been asked to do of Keepin’ It 1600. Tommy, with the freedom of being his own boss, had flown down last Friday and spent most of the weekend and week fucking around LA with Jon and Lovett to avoid the nerves. 

Monday they recorded a pod. Monday morning Trump retweeted an Infowars proposal about sterilizing alphas upon _arrest_. 

Tommy… might have yelled. A lot. 

“It was a good one,” Jon says easily, passing the breadbasket to Dan, “Didn’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Dan says softly. When Tommy glances sideways, Dan is still watching Tommy carefully, an indefinable expression on his face. “Lovett’s bit about swing voters was a little caustic, but funny. And ah, the tweet. You guys didn’t have to.”

“Didn’t have to what?” Lovett frowns. 

“Cover it?” Dan offers, uncertain. “We could have saved it for tonight, or, ah, let it go.” Tommy feels the rage boiling back up.

“Fuck that,” Tommy says before he can think twice, shyness forgotten as he stares at Dan head on. “The Republican party’s presidential nominee is validating a hateful policy of horrific abuse of bodily autonomy for people who get arrested for _jaywalking_. Not to mention how much more likely alphas are to get arrested for any display of aggression in public, even when they didn’t initiate the contact. Of _course_ we need to talk about it.”

Dan blinks at him, eyes a little wet. “Tommy,” he shakes his head and starts over. "You did a great job addressing it. Thank you.” 

Tommy nods a little, the tension he’s been holding since he listened back to the tape dissipating. No matter how much Jon and Lovett and their producer swore that it was good and on point, he’d been sure he sounded uneducated and overpassionate. Dan’s approval means… 

“Yeah,” Tommy smiles at him. “I got, ah, a little heated, but I think my point came through.”

“It definitely did,” Dan grins back. “Maybe less yelling on stage tonight though, we don’t want to blow the speakers.”

“They’ll soundcheck us,” Lovett frowns across the table. “I have to be able to yell, it’s my brand.”

“Your brand,” Jon snorts. “What is _your brand_ ordering us to eat? We’ve only got an hour before we gotta be there.” 

“Right, yes,” Lovett nods. “We’re gonna share every flatbread they have. How do you feel about goat cheese Dan?”

“Positive,” Dan laughs fondly. 

“Perfect,” Lovett turns to flag the waiter while the rest of them laugh at him, knees brushing under the table. Tommy grins across at Jon. The political arena may be going up in flames, but everything here, at this table, feels perfect. 

***

“The president elect’s press secretary confirmed reporting by The Washington Post that the incoming administration will be pursuing aggressive institutionalization of ‘undersocialized’ alphas, a definition that opponents say will mostly impact low income and homeless populations.”

“Fuck this,” Dan sighs, reaching for the remote. “Maybe if you covered it like the massive human rights abuse it is, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” he mutters at Chris Cuomo’s smug face before he clicks the TV off. 

“It’s awful,” Tommy echoes, the word _undersocialized_ spinning around in his brain, bouncing off the walls of his skull.

_“They just let _anyone_ work here nowadays,” his stepmother sniffs at a restaurant in Boston when the alpha waiter is a bit curt. After she waved him over obnoxiously, like there weren’t eight other tables waiting for his attention. “No one trains them properly on how to interact with people.”_

_“We have much better welfare systems in place now than we did even fifty years ago,” his high school government teacher tells the class intently. “Used to be that alphas who’d gone round the bend ended up in the streets til they hurt an omega, and hopefully someone took care of the alpha first.”_

_“You need to tame that child,” his dad lectures a cowering mother in the supermarket, her toddler throwing a fit on the floor. “Before she grows up a feral wolf-child.” _

“Hey Dan,” Tommy asks carefully, when they’ve pulled out the Scrabble board and gotten three turns into a game that’s already heating up. “Can I, ah, ask you something?”

“Course,” Dan says without looking up. To Tommy’s unending suprise, there doesn’t seem to be a bottom to Dan’s willingness to explain the things Tommy’s never learned. Slowly and patiently and without judgment for how backwards Tommy’s brain is, still. 

“Ah, is there-” Tommy searches for the words to ask. “I know that forced institutionalization is a godawful thing and that they’re talking about it to make people scared, obviously. But, is there any…” _truth at the center_. “My parents, my teachers, I always heard about unsocialized alphas and how dangerous they were. Is that a real thing?”

Dan snorts a little. “God no.” 

Tommy breathes out slowly, mind still racing. “Then why? There were all these stories about groups of alphas and violence and-” 

“Yeah,” Dan sighs. “You know how omegas are comparatively much rarer, genetically, than alphas?” Tommy nods. _Outnumbered three to one_,_ his dad warns_. “There’s- it’s getting a _little_ more acceptable for people to partner with someone whose dynamic doesn’t match theirs, but even so- there’s a lot of young, unpartnered alphas. Add to that how hard it is to find work in large parts of the country, and you’ve got a group of hurting, frustrated, _angry_, and overly hormonal people, who sure as hell can’t access suppressants. Shit happens.”

“That makes sense,” Tommy nods slowly. He’d never put together what those numbers meant for people on the other side. While he’d been sent on carefully managed dates with his choice of well-bred, well-_tamed_ alphas, he’d never thought that they weren’t guaranteed a partner on the other end. 

“So yeah,” Dan sighs. “There are more conflicts, especially in struggling areas, among alphas than any other group. But it’s-”

“Correlation not causation?” Tommy smiles a little. Dan showed him a study a few months ago about how the crime numbers are jacked up by population too, and how more alphas are victims of violent crime, too.

“Somewhat,” Dan agrees. “And focus on one part of the data without looking at the system that created it.”

“Okay,” Tommy nods. “That makes sense. But what about, like, the wolfgirl.”

The story had haunted his nightmares for years and had the exact effect his babysitter had intended: he’d been terrified to go anywhere near the woods. A little girl, maybe eight years old, had been found living with a pack of feral dogs. Despite the best attempts of doctors and psychologists, she’d lost the ability to speak, and couldn’t be taught to act like a normal human. 

“First of all, she wasn’t actually an alpha,” Dan sighs. “Someone just decided that made the story more compelling.” 

“More propagandizing, more like,” Tommy raises his eyebrows. 

“Yeah,” Dan nods. His brow furrows. “She also, came out a few years ago and did an interview admitting she’d played it up for the fame. Her parents were abusive, so she spent a lot of time with the dogs and would act like them to get affection from the pack. She’d only been with the dogs in the woods for a few weeks before the police found her.”

“Fuck,” Tommy breathes. This bullshit runs _so deep_. “And now she’s propaganda for a society that’s so scared of alphas they let this _maniac_ into the most powerful-” 

“Yeah,” Dan sighs heavily. 

“I didn’t-” Tommy shakes his head. “How are there still so many _lies_? I _want_ to know and I can’t figure out what’s true.”

“Only cure for fake information is true information,” Dan shrugs. “Let me know when you figure out a way to pump the truth into millions of American homes.”

Tommy presses his lips together. This is the opening he’s been waiting for for two weeks since the worst election night in history, ignoring Jon’s frenzied _did he say yes?_ texts and rehearsing this conversation in his head. He’s not sure why, but it feels like if Dan doesn’t like their plan, the whole thing is gonna crumble. 

“So, ahh…” Tommy stalls helplessly. _Fucking ask him already or I’m gonna call him, _Lovett threatens. “Jon and Lovett and I have an idea for that, actually.”

“Yeah?” Dan’s eyes brighten and he turns towards Tommy, open and welcoming. 

“We’re thinking about a new podcast.” 

***

Tommy sees them coming before they open their fat mouths. Two guys, stumbling drunk, one of them wearing a gaudy _San Francisco_ hat that outs them as tourists. Maybe a business trip to Silicon Valley turned boozy weekend in the Mission; maybe one of those joyriding trips up the Pacific Coast Highway in a flashy sports car that Tommy’d once dreamed of before the journey down the California coast became an essential part of his routine. 

He doesn’t clock them as _danger_, though, until the shorter one puts his hand on Dan’s shoulder, leaning into him, too close by half. He doesn’t realize how south it’s about to go until the guy smiles like a shark, and Dan _freezes_. 

“Hey big guy,” the dude practically purrs, in a voice he must think is seductive, but just accentuates how much he’s slurring. “You look like you could use a good fuck.”

Dan stays perfectly still, his eyes sliding down to the bar like he can will them away. 

“Come on,” The second guy says, pushing past his friend, getting between Dan and Tommy’s stools. Tommy’s thighs tense to spring up before the guy says his next words. “We could smell you from across the bar.” 

Dan’s suppressant-abbreviated rut starts in two days; they’re out one last night for a last hurrah. He does smell stronger than usual, when Tommy pauses to consider it, discarding the thought immediately to push off his stool, knocking the guy aside a little. 

“Whoa dude,” his baseball cap swiveling until the brim almost hits Tommy in the face. “We’re having a conversation here.” 

Dan’s still staring down at the bar, his fingers tense and curled into his hand. 

“No, you’re not.” Tommy says firmly, pushing the guy further out of his way. He reaches for Dan, pushing aside the crawl of his skin when his hand touches Dan’s side, _not important now_. “Dan, c’mon, let’s leave these assholes to their inevitable liver failure.” 

Dan, thank god, stands and follows him, still looking down. 

Tommy tentatively lets his hand slide to rest on Dan’s back as one of the assholes mutters, “_oh_, I see.” He steers Dan out of the bar as quickly as he can manage, forcing his bubbling rage down. 

They’ve walked three blocks back towards Tommy’s apartment when Dan finally speaks, Tommy’s hand falling uselessly back to his side. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” Dan says softly. 

Tommy turns to look at him, incredulous. “I wasn’t just gonna sit by while they harassed you!” 

Dan shakes his head, but he doesn’t look mad. His eyes are sparkling and his lips are curved into something that’s not quite a smile, but looks like it could get there easily. 

Tommy shoves his trembling hands into his pockets, kicking a stone up the street. They’re silent for another block before Tommy’s mouth opens, not entirely on purpose, and the words start spilling out. 

“When I was little, my dad made me watch the news with him every night. I remember being, I don’t know, six or seven, and waking up screaming from nightmares. My mom kept telling him I was too young, and he’d just frown at her and say ‘He needs to know what the world is, Louise.’” 

“Tommy,” Dan breathes out. “That’s shitty.” 

Tommy shakes his head. He’s not done. “I don’t know if it’s my little kid memory, or if their local Fox station is even more aggressively shitty than the norm, but I swear every story was like, a violent crime or some kind of Ponzi scheme. Always committed by an alpha, usually with an omega victim, though sometimes betas. 

“When I was fourteen and my parents took me to get suppressants for the first time, the pharmacist gave me pepper spray too. And my dad took me to a martial arts school to learn self-defense even earlier, the first day after my first heat ended. They bought me the top of the line alarm systems for every college dorm and campaign apartment. I had campus safety on speed dial for four years. Katie got mad at me cause I hadn’t kept up on self-defense and made me do workouts with her at the gym that mostly consisted of her attacking me over and over again,” Tommy pauses, realizing that his breath is coming in rapid gasps. 

Dan takes a couple quick steps until he’s in front of Tommy, walking backwards so that he can meet Tommy’s eyes when he says, “that’s no way to live, I’m sorry they treated you like you were that breakable Tommy. You’re so strong.” 

Tommy shakes his head a little. “That’s not my point.” It was shittty. He realized that sometime around when he almost jumped through the window when Lovett startled him in their shared living room. His dad directly caused so many unnecessary panic attacks when he could have just taught him tools instead of fear.

“My point is,” Tommy stops so he can look at Dan for the most important words of the lot. “I spent my whole life being afraid of alphas, and I never _knew_ how much you had to be afraid of too.” 

Dan smiles wryly and slowly, _slowly_, sets a hand on Tommy’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “This damn world has fucked us both,” he says softly, before taking a step back and walking forward again, slow so that Tommy can fall in step with him. “You’re- you’ve come so far from that life Tommy. You’re incredible.” 

Tommy shakes his head as they stop in front of his building. “I’m really not. But I’m trying my best.” 

Dan grins at him, and for one _dizzying, blinding, perfect _moment, Tommy thinks he might lean forward for a kiss. “Your best is pretty damn good, just so you know.” 

Then Dan waves, too quick, “see you next week, yeah? I want a thousand tacos after,” and starts off for his own place. 

Tommy watches his back retreat, tracing the lines of his back under his hoodie until they blur out of view. 

Tommy’s shoulder aches with phantom pressure. His palm feels like it’s on fire where it had rested in the small of Dan’s back, in some cruel ghost of possessiveness that can never be.

His lips are tingling with the false anticipation his traitorous brain conjured up. 

Dan’s sparkling eyes swim in his vision, like they’re stars lighting the night sky. 

Tommy’s shaken out of his reverie by a car peeling down the street, backfiring at the corner like a shot through his stupid heart. 

He’s in love with Dan. Dan, who’s so good and patient and _brilliant_. Dan, who improbably doesn’t hate him, after Tommy said and did such horrible things. Dan, who’s one of his closest friends. Dan, who deserves the most incredible partner in the world, not Tommy’s mess. 

Dan, who Tommy’s not sure he can fall out of love with if he tries. 


	5. Chapter 5

_Los Angeles, 2017_

“So, we’ve been working on opening this community center here in LA. It’s kinda a side project, actually, more on the ground than I get to do at work. We’re gonna have shelter space, but also launch some mentoring programs and outreach programs.” 

Adam’s eyes are shining with passion and Tommy wills his heart to flip. When he’d finally yielded to Lovett’s increasingly forceful attempts to set him up on a date, he’d been genuinely hopeful it would work out. Three months after moving to Los Angeles to devote himself to Crooked, Tommy’s really fucking exhausted of being the third wheel all the time. 

He also _really_ misses Dan, but, that’s kinda the point of this exercise. Maybe he was in love with Dan, but maybe he can get the companionship and passion and _goodness_ from someone who actually wants to date Tommy. 

Adam is perfect, on paper. He’s an alpha, with the same graceful way of minimizing the space he takes up as Dan does. He doesn’t exude world-weariness quite the same way, probably a product of spending his whole life in liberal California, pushing forward cutting edge outreach and community centers and expanded rights instead of fighting to be recognized as a person. 

Adam’s a lawyer, working for the ACLU’s _Equality for All_ campaign. He traveled to Sacramento last year to advocate for California’s healthcare expansion that finally brought alpha suppressants under the health insurance umbrella, for those lucky enough to live here. 

He’s smart and he’s funny and he’s, objectively, super hot. 

And Tommy isn’t interested in him at all. 

Tommy can’t stop looking at Adam’s hands, folded in front of him on the table, and thinking about Dan’s broad hands flying around as he talks when he gets _really_ into it. Tommy can’t look at Adam’s passionate expression and _not_ compare it to the way Dan lights up from the inside out when he talks about canvassing and voter engagement. 

When Adam sets a gentle hand on Tommy’s arm to stop him from walking into someone on their way out of the coffeeshop, Tommy has to stop himself from jerking back in surprise. Adam’s hand is warm and broad and smooth. Tommy’s skin doesn’t prickle, doesn’t feel warm; Adam’s touch doesn’t linger when Tommy pulls away. 

“I would like to go to the community center opening,” Tommy says stiltedly, as Adam looks at him, clearly waiting for him to say _something_. “I’ll keep an eye out for the flyers.” 

There, that was a polite enough way to communicate _I don’t think I’ll be calling you_, right?

Adam nods a little. “It was great to meet you Tommy, see you around.”

“Bye,” Tommy echoes and doesn’t watch him walk away. 

***

Jon greets Dan with a huge hug when they meet him in the Madison airport. Tommy aches to do the same, but settles for bumping his shoulder gently as they head out of baggage claim. 

“Are we really gonna be keeping you up past your bedtime this weekend?” Tommy asks wryly. He’d nearly fallen out of his chair when Dan tweeted that earlier this week. Dan’s texted him at one a.m. about a stupid thread on Twitter too many times to count. 

“Definitely,” Dan winks at him. “I’m the old fart of this crew, don’t you know?” 

Lovett snorts and turns to walk backwards ahead of them. “Jon’s more likely to fall asleep on stage than you are. Forget staying for_ Lovett or Leave It_’s late show, he’s already told me that he’s ditching out.” 

“You don’t even want me there!” Jon protests. “You told me to go back to the hotel and get my beauty rest.” 

“Lovett doesn’t want a bigger audience?” Dan raises his eyebrows. “Sorry Jon, that’s the least believable thing I’ve ever heard.” 

“Thank you Dan,” Lovett nods firmly. “You’re allowed to stay for the show, I’ll get you front row seats.” 

Dan turns to Tommy, a fake horrified look on his face, “what have I _done_?” 

“_I_, for one, am going to get cheese curds immediately,” Tommy shrugs. “Gonna need comfort food after talking about the NRA and Paul Ryan for two hours.” 

“I figured we’d get cheese curds now,” Dan laughs. “What’s our extra night here for?” 

“Jetlag,” Jon sighs as Lovett _beams_. 

“Dan,” Lovett grins, “You are the light of my life.” 

_Mine too_, Tommy thinks, as they pile into an Uber. _More than any of you will ever know_. 

***

“Night guys,” Jon mumbles from under Lovett’s arm in the lobby. 

Going out to one of their favorite dive bars after the Chicago show _seemed_ like such a good way to end the tour, and Tommy supposes it was. But all it’s done, in the end, is remind him how much older they’ve gotten, and how long its been. 

How long he’s been watching Dan out of the corner of his eye, first perturbed and stubbornly refusing to acknowledge his curiosity, then to make sure he caught Dan’s jokes and reactions, then to make sure Dan was laughing at _him_, then because his heart aches when he looks away. 

How long it’s taken for Tommy to figure his shit out, how many little needles and knives he’s shoved between them along the way. 

How long he’s been in love with Dan. 

This whole weekend has driven home, with startling sharpness, how _much_ he’s in love with Dan. Every time Dan turned to grin at him onstage; for a joke, for his analysis about Iran, just for the joy of doing _this_, talking about politics with his favorite people in front of sold out theaters. 

Every time Dan fell into step with him automatically, leaving the hotel, leaving a show, walking to dinner or a plane. Sitting across the aisle on the bus to Cleveland; pressed together in the stands in Ann Arbor; rolling their eyes at Jon’s extreme sappiness when Lovett rejoined them from his _Lovett or Leave It_ detour. 

Tommy’s body _aches_ to let this orbit around Dan become permanent, always. His heart doesn’t seem at all willing to listen to his head argue all the ways that it’s a terrible idea, and, as the weekend’s dragged on, Tommy can’t remember all the points on his list. 

“Want another drink?” Dan tilts his head towards the hotel bar with a soft smile. 

Tommy’s had far too much to drink already, but he can’t imagine willingly pulling away now, giving up a moment of looking at the gentle lines around Dan’s eyes. “‘Course,” he nods, following Dan and trying not to stare too obviously at his ass, accentuated and perfect in Dan’s tight jeans under his loose comfy sweatshirt. 

They find a set of comfy chairs in the corner of the bar with their gin and tonics, the silver in Dan’s hair glinting in the low mood lighting. 

“So,” Dan says softly. Tommy’s heart twists, as always, at the curve of his lips; the smile that’s just for him. “You guys have done something pretty incredible with this company.”

Tommy laughs softly, “It’s mostly Tanya and Sarah, honestly, we’re just along for the ride.” 

“Fair,” Dan snorts. “They’re terrifying. But,” he shakes his head, “these crowds this weekend, for our nonsense about _politics_.” 

“I know,” Tommy agrees, sliding forward in his seat, “I can’t believe it either. That’s you too, though. The audience likes you almost as much as they like Lovett.” 

“Flattery,” Dan shakes his head. “Lovett’s in a league of his own.” 

Tommy sighs, “true. I forgot how distracting it can be to work with him until this summer. Especially when he’s testing bits for Friday night.”

“I’m not that sad to miss that,” Dan says lightly. “Calling in has its benefits.” He shrugs a little, shoulders moving slow and languid with the alcohol. “Miss you though.”

_He means all three of you_, Tommy’s brain warns as his mouth opens and says without conscious intent, “I miss you so much.” 

Dan shakes his head a little. “You’re living the glamorous Hollywood life now.” 

Tommy snorts. “Glamorous? Mostly I third-wheel on Jon and Lovett or run by dog parks like a creeper.” 

“You’re still getting settled,” Dan laughs softly. “You’re gonna meet some starlet at the grocery store and get swept away.” 

“No,” Tommy says, sharper than he means to. He can’t bear it, suddenly. Dan thinking that Tommy’s still that shallow. Dan thinking he’s replaceable by some generic Hollywood model. “I went on three dates last month and I hated every single one of them.”

Dan opens his mouth, “Tommy-” 

“I couldn’t stop comparing them to _you_,” Tommy blurts. 

Dan freezes, mouth still open. 

Tommy’s heart pounds out of his chest. He wasn’t supposed to say that. He was pining _quietly_, he wasn’t burdening Dan with his feelings. 

Dan thinks Tommy is selfish and shallow and stuck in prejudices. He doesn’t want Tommy, he wants someone who’s actually progressive, who hasn’t hurt him a million times by accident. He probably doesn’t even want an omega at all; he probaby wants something like Jon and Lovett have, fuck dynamics and fuck determinism. 

Dan doesn’t want Tommy. 

“Sorry,” Tommy chokes out. Dan is still staring at him, eyes wide and panicked. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I know you don’t want me.” 

Tommy pushes up from his seat, tearing his eyes away from Dan’s face, Dan’s eyes, Dan’s mouth opening, “_Tommy_.” He leaves his drink on the table and practically runs for the elevator, leaning against the cool metal wall. _Fuck_. The elevator door slides open and he runs for his room, fumbling through three attempts before the door opens. 

Tommy drops to his bed, hands shaking, heart pounding. _He’s fucked it all up_. He forces himself to breathe. The tour’s over. They’re flying home tomorrow. Dan’s flight leaves two hours before theirs, he doesn’t even have to see Dan in the morning. There’s a month before their next tour, hopefully Dan won’t be angry anymore by then.

_Fuck_. 

***

Tommy dumps his suitcase into the washer without bothering to sort it. Knowing his luck, he’s left a red sock in there and everything will be pink when he pulls it out, but he can’t be bothered to care. 

He came home from the airport and tugged on a pair of shorts and a soft hoodie before pouring a tall glass of whiskey and giving up on any semblance of functioning. He doesn’t have to go into work today, he can call out tomorrow and claim travel flu. No one has to talk about the way he’s blown up their podcast, their company, his life. 

He’s starting the washer when the doorbell rings. 

Tommy sighs and glares at the machine. “Coming,” he calls flatly. 

It’s gotta be Jon or Lovett, looking for something they forgot in a hotel room and are convinced ended up in his suitcase. Tommy sighs as he meanders to the door. They could have just texted. Actually, he frowns at the door in the entryway, they should have just used their spare keys. Lovett doesn’t understand boundaries anyway. 

“What’s up?” Tommy asks as he pulls the door open slowly. Then he freezes. 

Dan is on his doorstep. Dan is on his doorstep, hair fluffy and unkempt, t-shirt wrinkled around his shoulders, face slightly flushed. Dan, who should be in San Francisco by now. Dan, who’s supposed to be avoiding Tommy as studiously as Tommy’s avoiding him. 

Dan swallows visibly, his jaw set like he’s steeling himself to do something terrible. He’s so mad he flew all the way here? 

“You think I don’t want you,” Dan says, without preamble, flat and even.

Tommy shrinks back. It’s not like Dan to rub salt in the wound. 

“So…” Dan says, softer, more uncertain, “You want me?” 

Tommy can't look away from Dan’s careful, steady face, his expression controlled, but his eyes… _hopeful_? Everything in Tommy screams run away, say no, do anything that will _stop this_.

But Dan’s face is still kind, it’s still Dan. Tommy can’t lie to him. 

So Tommy nods, feeling a pain in his chest as his neck moves. No going back now. 

Dan smiles this ridiculous, confusing, flushed smile, and Tommy’s heart stops beating. _Maybe_.

Dan steps forward into Tommy’s space, getting closer than Tommy can ever remember him being before. He slowly, slowly reaches a hand out to touch Tommy’s shoulder and Tommy’s whole body comes alive at the contact. 

“Tommy,” Dan says, his voice wonderful and warm and _safe_. “I am so in love with you.”

Tommy sways forward, steadied by Dan’s sturdy grip on his shoulder. "I thought-" Tommy shakes his head helplessly. This can’t be real. "I thought you didn't- me too, fuck, me too. _Dan_."

Dan steps even closer, his face splitting into the widest grin. His other arm comes up around Tommy, cups his face carefully. Tommy leans into his touch desperately, certain he’d fall over if Dan wasn’t holding him. 

“_Tommy_,” Dan breathes, and closes the distance between them. 

The kiss feels like flying. The kiss feels like coming home. The kiss feels like every cliche Tommy’s ever heard and _more_. Tommy kisses Dan with the force of a decade, not caring that they both smell like airplane, forgetting that he didn’t sleep a wink last night. 

After a minute or an hour, Tommy has to grab for Dan’s hips to steady himself. His fingers, despite their shaking, are strong and deliberate, Dan’s body solid and warm and _perfect_ under his hands. He can touch. He’s allowed. Dan loves him too. 

“We should,” Tommy pulls back a little to gasp, “Couch?” 

Dan whines low in his throat and pulls Tommy back for another kiss, then guides Tommy backwards, slamming the door behind him. 

Tommy’s knees are trembling and Dan’s entire body is shaking against him by the time they hit the couch, falling together. Tommy doesn’t know, anymore, where he ends and Dan begins. 

They kiss, frantic and desperate, for a long time, the kisses softening and slowing after a while. Tommy doesn’t move away as he shifts to curl against Dan, Dan’s arm wrapping around him so tightly. 

Tommy says, quietly, as his fingers trail along Dan's side, "You pulled away, yesterday'

Dan tilts his head a little, “so did you. You looked so freaked out, I thought,” his hand cupping Tommy’s cheek, thumb tracing his jawline, “I thought you realized, remembered, you couldn’t, wouldn’t want... someone like me.”

“No!” Tommy says, shocked. "I never - I thought you'd never be able to forgive-"

Dan kisses his forehead. “You’ve been forgiven for a long time.”

Tommy sighs a deep, happy sigh, "I've loved you for a long time."

“You too,” Dan promises against his lips. “So much.”

***

When Tommy comes out of the studio after recording his interview for Wednesday’s Pod Save the World, Dan is sitting in the conference room, the placid, happy smile that’s seemed glued to his face all morning unfaded by an hour of Lovett’s interrogation. 

Tommy woke up with a crick in his neck and Dan’s grin the first thing his eyes saw. It’s been the best morning of his life so far, even though they had to leave the house too soon for the office, even though he had to walk away into the studio, ignoring the prying eyes of their employees and Lovett’s soft shriek as he grabbed for Dan’s wrist. 

“Blink once for ‘we totally fucked’ and twice for ‘I’m in love with him,’” Lovett is pleading as Tommy slips in behind him. Dan shakes his head and looks up to beam at Tommy. 

“Not here,” Tommy laughs softly, as he crosses the room to rest his hands on Dan’s shoulders, gentle and possessive and comforting. 

Dan turns his head to kiss Tommy’s fingers gently and Lovett _shrieks_. 

“Lunch,’ Jon says forcefully, pushing up from his seat. “You’re telling us everything, but why don't we, um, do this where the whole office isn’t staring in the glass.”

“Good idea,” Tommy laughs softly, glancing out to where Elijah’s hand is darting suspiciously close to his pocket. Tommy takes Dan’s hand as soon as Dan’s on his feet, squeezing tightly as they walk the block to Norm’s and Lovett claims them a table on the patio.

Jon just grins at them across the table as Lovett starts in on the probing questions.

“When?” 

“Last night,” Tommy laughs. 

“How?” 

“Cause it was time,” Dan shrugs, squeezing Tommy’s hand tightly. 

“How long?”

“Forever,” Tommy says simply, turning to grin at Dan. 

Lovett _squeaks_. Jon laughs, “eat your burger before it gets cold, love,” and taps Tommy’s ankle under the table. Tommy smiles at him gratefully. He owes Jon… a lot. 

Tommy manages to eat half of his sandwich before Lovett finishes scarfing down his burger and taps the table demandingly. “Since when have you been _this_ over your shit Tommy?”

Tommy flinches. “I’ve been working on it for _so long_.” 

Dan squeezes his hand tightly. “You’ve grown so much Tommy.” 

“He has,” Jon agrees with a reassuring smile. 

Lovett shrugs archly, but his smile at Tommy promises that he agrees before he turns on Dan. “What happened to ‘no one for me’?” 

Dan says, simple and sure, "Tommy happened."

Tommy can’t care that they haven’t talked about PDA yet, can’t care that Lovett and Jon are audibly _aww_-ing, he _has_ to kiss Dan for that. Dan cups his face gently and kisses him back and Tommy can’t bear to pull away. 

Jon coughs sort of delicately, “Ahh, we can get the check if you guys want to go home.”

“Work?” Tommy frowns.

“You’re gonna be useless in the office,” Lovett snorts. “Go.”

Tommy flushes, but doesn’t turn them down. He needs to be touching Dan, wants _everything_, even as he’s so nervous he can’t see straight on the drive. 

Dan keeps hold of Tommy’s hand as Tommy leads him into the house. Dan’s hand is shaking in his, so Tommy swallows his nerves and turns, once the door is shut.

“I want you,” he manages, finding strength in the light in Dan’s eyes. 

“_Tommy_,” Dan gasps. “So much.” 

Tommy tugs him down to the couch, pulling Dan on top of him as they kiss. He means to go slow, more kissing, more touching, maybe a nap, but Dan’s body is pressed against him and he feels _so good_. Tommy spreads his knees and Dan falls forward into him.

Dan catches himself on his knee and his hand by Tommy's head, but the shift goes straight to Tommy’s dick and Tommy feels a rush to his head, moaning before he means to. 

Dan swallows and pushes up a little. 

Tommy whines at the loss, too aroused to even feel embarrassed. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Dan promises, tracing Tommy’s cheek with gentle fingers. “But I don’t want- Can we move to the bedroom?”

Tommy laughs softly. “Please,” and pushes Dan up slowly. 

Dan squeezes his hand tightly and pulls him down the hall, pushing Tommy gently ahead of him into the room. Tommy spares a second to be grateful he made his bed before leaving for the tour as he drops down onto the comforter automatically. 

When Tommy looks up, Dan’s still in the door, hovering, with a worried crinkle on his face, looking anywhere but at Tommy. Tommy pushes up on his elbows, confused. 

“Come here.” Tommy holds out a hand, inviting. 

Dan pauses a second too long before he trips over to takeTommy's hand, sitting on the bed nervously. 

Tommy’s heart pounds, Lovett’s horrifying story about Jim Hollis and echoes of the harassers from the bar in San Francisco floating through his mind. He slides carefully behind Dan, squeezing his shoulders gently. “We don’t have to.” 

Dan squeezes his hand tightly, pulls Tommy's arms around him tighter, whispers, "I want to, I just-"

“Tell me, love,” Tommy kisses his shoulder gently, prays it isn’t that someone’s hurt him. 

Dan takes a shuddering breath, then another, and then whispers, barely audible, "I haven't, ever."

Tommy sucks in a breath, surprised. He smacks himself internally for being surprised. Is he ever going to fucking _stop_ buying into stereotypes? 

He rubs Dan's arm slow and steady, breathing as controlled as he can manage. When he’s sure Dan’s calming down, Tommy says soft and slow, "that's okay, we'll- go slow,” adds, with a nervous giggle, "It's.. kinda hot.” 

Tommy can _feel_ Dan flush, but it must work, because Dan turns his head immediately, leaning into a kiss that sets Tommy’s whole body on fire. Tommy scoots back slowly and gently pushes Dan down on the mattress, gratified when Dan follows his hands easily. 

Tommy slides on top of Dan carefully, trying to go slow as he unbuttons Dan’s shirt, one button at a time. Dan’s apparently pushed his nerves away, or is too into Tommy to wait, and isn’t that _hot_, because he pulls Tommy’s shirt off in one motion, pushing at Tommy's waistband and making impatient noises when Tommy takes too long to adjust his hips.

“Okay, okay,” Tommy laughs, sitting up to finish stripping. Once he’s naked, he reaches for Dan’s waistband, pulling his pants down faster than he’d like, but apparently still too slowly, judging by the way Dan pushes into him as he yanks his shirt the rest of the way off. 

“Can I, ahh,” Tommy slides down between Dan’s hips. Dan is _big_, and his dick is hard and glistening with sweat and precome and Tommy’s never wanted anything more than he wants to suck him off. 

Dan gasps, “_Tommy_! Yes.”

Tommy grins and drops his face immediately, sucking Dan in and sliding his hand up the rest of him. Dan tastes as good as he looks and Tommy loses himself in it immediately. He hasn’t fucked a guy since an early college fling, but he remembers how to do this like riding a bike. 

He tightens his lips around Dan as he wraps his fingers around the base of Dan’s dick. Tommy’s starting to sink into it, finding a comfortable rhythm when he starts to feel the base of Dan's dick grow and harden. He quickens his movements, feeling Dan's knot grow large enough to fill his palm.

“Fuck, Tommy, I’m sorry,” Dan’s hands land in his hair. “I didn’t mean to- I’m sorry.” 

Tommy slides off with a groan and touches Dan’s thigh soothingly, rubbing his hands in a slow circle. “Don’t apologize,” Tommy says firmly. “It’s- god that’s hot. You’re so into me.”

“I _am_,” Dan says desperately. “_Tommy_.”

“I got you,” Tommy promises, sliding back down. He squeezes Dan’s knot gently as he hollows his cheeks. 

“Tommy, I’m-” Dan warns desperately. Tommy hums and takes him deeper, swallowing as Dan comes, hot and salty and even more than Tommy bargained for. 

“I’m sorry,” Dan says wetly, gasping, as Tommy pulls off and leans up to kiss Dan’s chest.

“Shh, love.” Tommy reaches to touch his cheek. “I love every single part of you.” 

Dan moans desperately. His knot is still hot and heavy in Tommy’s hand and Tommy squeezes experimentally, grinning when Dan groans and arches into him. “I bet you can come again,” Tommy says with a grin, sliding his other hand down to cup Dan’s balls. 

Dan arches off the bed. “_Tommy!_” 

Tommy grins and tightens his hands. “Come for me love, you’re so gorgeous, I could touch you all day.” 

Dan pants and shivers under him. Tommy keeps touching him, gentle then firm then gentle again. He murmurs soft praise while Dan’s eyes go wet with tears and as he finally _sobs_ Tommy’s name and comes again, his knot softening in Tommy’s sticky hands. 

Tommy leans to kiss his chest, “Fuck, you’re incredible.” 

Dan shakes his head, breathless, “You are. Tommy. Come here,” his hands reaching out desperately to pull Tommy close. Tommy goes easily and Dan pulls him down into a sloppy kiss. 

Tommy groans into Dan’s mouth, letting his hips roll slowly against Dan’s thigh. He’s pretty sure he’s never been more turned on in his entire life. 

“I got you, love,” Dan breathes, reaching down with shaking hands. 

“_Dan_,” Tommy whines into his mouth. 

“Yeah, baby,” Dan says, voice rough. Tommy feels a thrill rush through him at the pet name, bucking into Dan’s shaking fingers. Dan manages to squeeze him lightly and Tommy goes flying over the edge, the whole world going black as he shakes against Dan’s neck. 

When he comes to, Dan’s running his hands up and down Tommy’s back, murmuring into his hair. “God you’re amazing, I can’t believe I get to touch you.” 

Tommy tips his head up for a kiss. “I love you.” 

Dan smiles into his mouth. “I love you so much.” 

Tommy shifts to nestle into Dan’s side more comfortably, tucking his head into Dan’s shoulder. “I’m sleepy now though.” 

Dan laughs softly and holds him close. “Sleep then, love. I’ll be here.”

***

Dan blinks at Tommy nervously over his box of takeout noodles. “Ahh, could I-” he shakes his head. “These are really good.”

“Lovett found this place,” Tommy grins, “of course.”

“Of course,” Dan echoes, his eyes going a bit distant. Tommy frowns at him. Everything’s been going so well; they woke up after _phenomenal_ sex, ordered takeout, showered together until it arrived, and now they’re eating in bed. He doesn’t want Dan to be nervous and distant. 

“What’s going on in your head?” Tommy reaches for Dan’s hand. “Tell me.”

Dan shakes himself a little. “Sorry, I just… Can I- Could I- Would you like it if I-” 

“_Dan_,” Tommy frowns. “Spit it out love, I’m not going anywhere.” 

Dan stares into his takeout box like it’s hiding the secret to life and mutters, so low that Tommy barely catches it, “Could I blow you?” 

Tommy snorts. “Could you… _Dan_.”

Dan looks up, eyes wide, “If you don’t want-” 

Tommy shakes his head and shoves the takeout garbage to the floor, sliding into Dan’s lap to kiss him deeply. “That’s so hot. Please.”

Dan blinks up at him. “Really? You want- I don’t know how, you’ll have to help me.” 

“I can do that,” Tommy kisses his cheek. “My turn to teach you something, _finally_.” 

Dan laughs and sets his dinner on the bedside table. “Good for you.” He flips them without warning and Tommy yelps. 

“Where’d the nerves go?” Tommy giggles as Dan tugs his boxers down and kisses his hip bone, sucking in a bruise carefully. 

Tommy doesn’t remember the last time he got a blowjob. Katie never would, of course. It’s not- he’s not surprised Dan wants to, when he thinks about it, but it’s not- typically, traditionally, alphas don’t _give_ in sex. They’re supposed to want only rough, penetrative sex. 

Tommy thought he’d wanted that too, once upon a time. Katie fucking him, biting him, hitting him, pulling his hair. Jerking himself off sometimes in the bathroom, when she fell asleep without getting him off. 

Now, with Dan’s mouth too gentle and too much all at once, ghosting over his dick, Tommy can’t remember what that felt like. 

“Fuck, love, that’s so good,” Tommy reaches to touch his head. “A little more pressure, you’re not gonna hurt me.” 

Dan’s so responsive, tightening his mouth immediately. Tommy guides him a little with his hands to a better angle and then closes his eyes and gets lost in it, arching up as gently as he can and moaning in pleasure. 

Dan’s mouth is hot and tight and perfect and before he knows it, Tommy feels his orgasm cresting and tugs Dan’s hair. “Dan, pull off love.” Dan listens, thank god, and replaces his mouth with his hand, stroking Tommy through it as he comes and comes and comes. 

Tommy’s vaguely aware, after, of Dan sliding over him and leaning down to kiss him; means to reach for Dan and can’t make his muscles work. “I got it,” Dan whispers in his ear, Dan’s arm moving between their bodies, “You’re so much for me, god.”

By the time Tommy’s head is clear, Dan curled around him, both of them hopelessly sticky again. 

“Good?” Tommy reaches for Dan’s cheek, stroking the short stubble on his face. “Was that good, love?”

“_God_,” Dan leans to kiss him. “I thought I’d like it, I _hoped_ I’d like it, but I couldn’t have imagined- I loved that. I love _you_.” 

Tommy kisses him gently. “You’re amazing. I can’t wait to try everything with you.”

“In the morning,” Dan murmurs sleepily. “I wanna give you the world.”

***

Tommy wakes up first in the morning. He can’t look away from Dan, unable to resist the urge to trace his face. He’s really here, the last twelve hours weren’t some delusional dream. 

Dan is in his bed. Dan loves him. Dan’s promised to be with him. Dan had _phenomenal_ sex with him. Twice. 

Dan blinks awake, finally, and smiles soft and happy. “Morning, love.” 

“Morning,” Tommy leans to kiss his cheek. 

Dan pulls him closer and into a real kiss. Tommy’s heart aches with how in love he is. 

“I don’t want you to leave,” Tommy whispers against Dan’s lips. 

Dan pulls back, blinking in surprise. “Who said I was leaving?”

“Well, presumably you can't just stay in my bed,” Tommy sighs. “You have like... an apartment? a job?"

Dan makes an annoyed noise, his face wrinkling. “What if I want to just stay in your bed?”

Tommy’s breath catches. He might- Tommy pushes up to a sitting position and frowns at Dan thoughtfully. “At the risk of invoking bad memories... I did once tell you that you should quit and come work with Jon and I."

Dan's eyebrows go up.

"I wasn't joking, or not completely,” Tommy swallows. “I mean, we've got a new company now... that you're already essential to... you could... finally make it official?"

Dan swallows. “Tommy.”

“I mean it,” Tommy presses, grabbing his hand. “I know you’ve said no when we asked in the past, but I really want you to. _We_ really want you to.”

Dan smiles a little, wry. “That offer came with some promises about company culture, if I recall correctly.” 

“We’ve got inclusive leave policies, for everyone,” Tommy babbles helplessly. “And we’re partnering with this community center to do outreach. And we’ve got a whole set of classes for our interns and new hires-” 

Dan leans in and shuts him up with a kiss. “I know, love. I know.”

Tommy makes a frustrated noise into his mouth, but doesn’t pull back. 

Dan laughs softly and strokes Tommy’s cheek. “I feel like we should talk to your co-founders first, but yes.”

"We've already talked about it," Tommy tells him. They’ve already drawn up a few different contracts, actually, that live in Jon’s desk drawer. “But sure, we'll ask them this morning."

Dan shakes his head, "might be a little different, now that we're..."

Tommy snorts. “Now that we’re in love? I think that ship sailed a while ago. Now that we’re together? Look at Jon and Lovett.”

“You’re right,” Dan agrees softly, leaning to kiss him gently. “I’m just, I’m not used to my life going _this_ well.” 

“You deserve it,” Tommy promises. “You deserve _everything_. I wanna give you everything.” 

“All I need is you,” Dan promises, holding him close. 

Tommy chokes a little and kisses him. “I am so, so in love with you. I want you to be mine forever.” 

“I am,” Dan promises. 

_Forever_, Tommy leans into another, deeper kiss. They can work with that. 

**Author's Note:**

> I’m always dying about these idiots on [tumblr](everyonewillsee.tumblr.com), come chat!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Reflections on Animality and Humanity and the Overlap Therein](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20529083) by [sansets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sansets/pseuds/sansets)


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